PAPERS 


THE  SLAVE  POWER, 


FIRST    PUBLISHED    IN    THE 


A 

"BOSTON    WHIG." 


BY  JOHN  G.  PALFBEY, 


OF    CAMBRIDGE,    MIDDLESEX    COUNTY,    MASSACHUSETTS. 


BOSTON: 
MERRILL,    COBB    &    CO. 

8   CONGRESS    STREET. 


^ 


O) 

P  ,  -y  --^^C^-H/Vv.    N-frtrrvv^ 

CONTENTS,    ^       '* 


No.  I.  —  Its  Foundation  .  .  . 

No.  II.—  Its  Place  in  the  Federal  Constitution      . 


No.  III.—  First  Step  forward  in  the  Legislature.  —  Abolition  of  Jury  Trials 

for  the  Question  of  Personal  Liberty  .  .  .7 


No.  IV.  —  Re-inforced  with  French  and  Spanish  Auxiliaries  .            .     9 

No.  V.—  Plot  for  another  Alliance          ....  ?j/       13 

No.  VI.—  No  Outside  Row  to  the  Cotton  Field        .           .  .           .16 

No.  VII.—  Fortified  with  a  Quarter  part  of  Mexico         .           .  *  ,      19 

No.  VIII.  —  Objections  to  Annexation  in  the  Free  States.  —  Counter-Current 

in  Massachusetts  .....  21 


^|   No.  IX.—  Consequences  of  Cottoning  to  it  in  the  North  .  .  24 

^°  No.  X.—  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it?  —  The  North  is  a  Fraction 
>?  of  the  Human  Race  .....        28 

t 

Us  No.  XL—  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it  ?  —  Business  of  the  North 

sacrificed  .....  31 


//>  No.  XII.  —  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it  ?  —  Its  influence  on  the  Com- 

petency of  Voters  and  Rulers  ...  35 

& 

O  No.  XIII.—  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it  ?  —  Costly  and  Wicked  Wars    38 


IV  CONTENTS. 


No.  XIV.— What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it  ?  — The  North  defrauded 

and  brow-beaten  by  its  Common  Legislation  .  42 

No.  XV.—  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  it  ?  —  Outrages  on  Northern 

Citizens          .  ,»„,    ..*•».    >-•*  ^  45 


No.  XVI.—  Its  Tyranny  over  the  Non-Slaveholders  of  the  South      .  50 

No.  XVIL— It  exists  by  the  Sufferance  of  the  Southern  Non-Slaveholders  54 

No.  X VIII.—  Who  will  be  harmed  by  its  Overthrow  ?  60 
No.  XIX. —  Who  will  be  harmed  by  its  Overthrow  ?  — Prudential  Considera- 


Ti 


tions  for  the  Slave  Holder  .  63 


No.  XX. —  Who  will  be  harmed  by  its  Overthrow  ?  —  Economical  Considera- 
tions for  the  Slaveholder  .... 


No.  XXI. —  Who  will  be  harmed  by  its  Overthrow? — Economical  Consid- 
erations for  the  Slaveholder  .    70 


No.  XXII.—  What  should  the  Free  States  do  about  it?    ™?*  '    l  ^ '*  75 

No.  XXIIL— What  can  the  Free  States  do  about  it?  80 


No.  XXIV.— What  must  the  Free  States  do  about  it?  — What  must  Massa- 
chusetts do  ?  . 


THE  SLAVE  POWER, 


NO,  I. 

ITS   FOUNDATION. 

MOST  New  England  men,  who  have  talked  five  minutes  with  a 
Virginian,  have  heard  him  illustrate  the  characters  of  the  two  races 
by  a  reference  to  their  Roundhead  and  Cavalier  origin.  He  is  apt  to 
be  under  some  misapprehension  of  the  facts.  Of  the  Roundhead 
founders  of  Massachusetts  many  were  persons  of  fortune  and  educa- 
tion, and  not  a  few  were  of  the  noble  and  gentle  blood  of  England. 
The  settlers  of  Virginia  were  Cavaliers  of  that  sort  of  which  Wild- 
rake,  in  Scott's  novel  of  Woodstock,  is  the  type  and  embodiment. 
"  A  great  part,"  so  says  Captain  Smith,  the  man  who  saved  them 
from  self-destruction,  "  were  unruly  sparks,  packed  off  by  their  friends 
to  escape  worse  destinies  at  home.  Many  were  poor  gentlemen, 
broken  tradesmen,  rakes,  and  libertines,  footmen,  and  such  others  as 
were  much  fitter  to  spoil  and  ruin  a  Commonwealth  than  to  help  to 
raise  or  maintain  one." 

These  were  just  the  sort  of  people  for  slavery  to  suit.  A  Dutch 
ship,  in  1620,  brought  some  African  slaves  into  James  River,  and 
from  that  time  the  importation  went  on  rapidly.  The  foundation  of 
the  domestic  institution,  and  of  the  social  fabric  of  the  South,  were 
laid.  When,  in  1646,  a  cargo  of  Africans  were 'brought  from  the 
slave-coast  to  Boston,  the  magistrates  sent  them  back,  declaring 
themselves  "  bound  by  the  first  opportunity  to  bear  witness  against 
the  heinous  and  crying  sin  of  man-stealing."*  The  destiny  of  New- 
England  was  to  be  different. 

The  settlement  of  South  Carolina  began  with  negroes  from  the 
West  Indies,  and  in  a  few  years  their  number  within  her  borders 
was  nearly  double  that  of  the  whites.  If  to  other  colonies  belonged 

*  "  The  General  Court,  conceiving  themselves  bound  by  the  first  opportunity  to 
bear  witness  against  the  heinous  and  crying  sin  of  man-stealing,  as  also  to  prescribe 
such  timely  redress  for  what  is  past,  and  such  law  for  the  future,  as  may  sufficiently 
deter  all  others  belonging  to  us  to  have  to  do  with  such  vile  and  most  odious 
courses,  justly  abhorred  of  all  good  and  just  men,  do  order  that  the  negro  interpre- 
ter and  others  unlawfully  taken,  be  by  the  first  opportunity  (at  the  charge  of  the 
country  for  the  present)  sent  to  their  native  country,  Guinea,  and  a  letter  of  indig- 
nation of  the  Court  thereabouts,  desiring  our  honored  Governor  would  please  to  put 
this  in  execution."  [Massachusetts  Colony  Laws,  1646.]  They  were  so  scrupu- 
lous as  to  send  and  bring  back  one  who  had  been  smuggled  down  into  Maine. 

1 


2  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

the  bad  eminence  of  an  earlier  introduction  of  slavery,  Georgia  claims 
the  still  more  odious  one  of  superseding  with  it,  after  twenty  years, 
the  humane  institutions  of  her  philanthropic  founder.  From  Vir- 
ginia slavery  easily  passed  over  into  North  Carolina,  Maryland  and 
Delaware.  Pennsylvania,  after  a  period  of  fluctuating  policy,  finally 
bounded  its  progress  towards  the  North.  There  were  slaves  indeed 
in  considerable  numbers  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  and  some  in 
the  Eastern  States.  But  they  were  principally  employed  as  domes- 
tic servants ;  the  hardship  of  their  condition  was  much  mitigated ; 
and  they  made  but  an  immaterial  element  in  the  constitution  of 
Northern  society.  In  May,  1701,  Boston  instructed  its  representa- 
tives to  move  to  "  put  a  period  to  negroes  being  slaves."  But  the 
power  of  the  mother  country  stood  in  the  way.  The  Constitution 
of  Massachusetts  was  established  in  1780.  In  1781,  a  bill  was  found 
in  Worcester  county  against  a  white  man  for  assaulting  and  impris- 
oning a  black.  It  was  tried  before  the  Supreme  Court  in  1783. 
The  defence  was,  that  the  black  was  a  slave,  and  that  the  act  char- 
ged was  the  necessary  restraint  and  correction  of  the  master.  But 
the  Court  held  that  under  the  clause  in  the  Declaration  of  Rights, 
that  "  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal,  and  have  certain  natural,  es- 
sential and  inalienable  rights,  among  which  may  be  reckoned  the 
right  of  enjoying  and  defending  their  lives  and  liberties,"  there  could 
could  be  no  legal  slavery  in  Massachusetts.  The  jury  thought  so 
too;  the  master  was  convicted,  and  fined  forty  shillings:  and  the 
question  was  settled  for  ever. 

At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  South  Carolina,  with  the 
labor  of  her  slaves,  produced  abundance  of  the  best  rice  in  the  world. 
The  profitableness  of  the  bondman  of  course  riveted  his  chains.  Of 
the  humble  but  excellent  men  who  fled  to  America  from  Popish  per- 
secution in  France,  the  smaller  portions  planted  themselves  in  Mas- 
sachusetts and  New  York,  the  largest  in  South  Carolina.  The 
South  Carolina  emigrants  or  their  children  fell  into  the  bad  princi- 
ples and  practices  of  their  neighbors  ;  and  the  representatives  of  the 
refugee  Huguenots  of  1686  were,  in  1786,  almost  the  only  champi- 
ons of  slavery  in  the  Convention  for  devising  a  Constitution  to  give 
practical  efficacy  to  the  maxims  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
that  "  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal,  and  have  certain  inalienable 
rights." 

In  1790,  Virginia  had  293,427  slaves.  The  number  in  the 
whole  United  States  was  less  than  700,000.  In  1800,  there  were 
still  not  quite  900,000.  In  1810,  after  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana, 
the  census  of  slaves  fell  a  little  short  of  1,200,000.  In  1820,  there 
were  more  than  1,500,000;  in  1830,  more  than  2,000,000;  in 
1840,  nearly  2.500,000;  and  in  1846,  the  number  considerably  ex- 
ceeds 3,000,000,  being  greater  than  that  of  the  whole  white  popula- 
tion of  the  country  at  the  close  of  the  revolutionary  war. 

The  wickedness  and  present  mischiefs  of  slavery,  and  something 


THE    FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION.  3 

af  its  threatening  aspect  upon  the  future,  were  seen  by  discerning 
men  before  the  Federal  Union.  Mr.  Jefferson  wrote  his  "  Notes 
on  Virginia"  in  1781.  "The  whole  commerce  between  master 
and  slave,"  said  he,*  "  is  a  perpetual  exercise  of  the  most  boisterous 
passions,  the  most  unremitting  despotism  on  the  one  part,  and  de- 
grading submissions  on  the  other.  Our  children  see  this,  and  learn 
to  imitate  it:  for  man  is  an  imitative  animal.  ***** 
The  parent  storms ;  the  child  looks  on ;  catches  the  lineaments  of 
wrath ;  puts  on  the  same  airs  in  the  circle  of  smaller  slaves ;  gives 
loose  to  the  worst  of  passions ;  and  thus  nursed,  educated,  and  daily 
exercised  in  tyranny,  cannot  but  be  stamped  by  it  with  odious  pe- 
culiarities. The  man  must  be  a  prodigy,  who  can  retain  his  manners 
and  morals  undepraved  by  such  circumstances.  And  with  what 
execration  should  the  statesman  be  loaded,  who,  permitting  one  half 
of  the  citizens  thus  to  trample  on  the  rights  of  the  other,  transforms 
those  into  despots,  and  these  into  enemies,  destroys  the  morals  of 
the  one  part,  and  the  amor  paJrite  of  the  other.  ***** 
In  a  warm  climate,  no  man  will  labor  for  himself  who  can  make  an- 
other labor  for  him.  This  is  so  true,  that  of  the  proprietors  of  slaves 
a  very  small  proportion  indeed  are  ever  seen  to  labor.  And  can  the 
liberties  of  a  nation  be  thought  secure  when  we  have  removed  their 
only  firm  basis,  a  conviction  in  the  minds  of  the  people  that  these 
liberties  are  of  the  gift  of  God  ;  that  they  are  not  to  be  violated  but 
with  his  wrath  ?  Indeed  I  tremble  for  my  country,  when  I  reflect 
that  God  is  just ;  that  his  justice  cannot  sleep  for  ever  ;  that,  consid- 
ering numbers,  nature,  and  natural  means  only,  a  revolution  of  the 
wheel  of  fortune,  an  exchanged  f  situation,  is  among  possible  events ; 
that  it  may  become  probable  foy  supernatural  interference.  The 
Almighty  has  no  attribute  which  can  take  sides  with  us  in  such  a 


NO.  II. 


ITS   PLACE  IN  THE   FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION. 

IN  the  Convention  for  forming  a  Federal  Constitution,  questions 
?e!ating  to  Slavery  could  not  fail  to  present  themselves  with  promi- 
nence. In  the  discussions  and  negotiations  to  which  it  gave  rise, 
Virginia,  which  owned  nearly  half  the  slaves  in  the  country,  acted 
a  comparatively  generous  part.  Maryland  and  North  Carolina  fol- 
lowed her  lead.  South  Carolina,  which  owned  the  next  most,  and 
Georgia,  were  moved  by  other  instincts. 

Under  the  old  Confederation,  when  Congress  assessed  upon  the 

*  Answer  to  Query  18k 

1% 


4  THE    SLAVE    t'OWEK. 

several  States  the  portion  which  they  were  respectively  to  raise  of  o 
gross  sum  of  money,  and  the  States  proceeded  to  tax,  each  its  own 
citizens,  the  rule  of  assessment  was  early  made  a  question.  One 
proposal  was,  that  the  States  should  be  taxed  in  proportion  to  the 
value  of  lands  and  houses  ;  another,  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  inhabitants  ;  another,  to  the  number  of  white  inhabitants  ;  anoth- 
er, that  two  slaves  should  count  as  one  freeman.  The  rule  finally 
adopted  was  founded  on  the  value  of  occupied  land.  The  same 
question  occurred  again  in  the  Convention  for  framing,  the  Federal 
Constitution.  Taxation,  which  was  to  go  hand  in  hand  with  repre- 
sentation in  the  popular  branch  of  the  Legislature,  was  of  course  to 
be  proportioned  to  the  amount  of  property*  But  what  was  the  best 
practical  measure  of  property  as  between  different  States  I  It  was 
agreed  that  the  amount  of  population  was  so*  But  were  slaves, 
who  in  our  view  were  human  beings,  and  in  another  were  property 
like  any  other  stock  on  a  farm,  were  they, or  were  they  not,  to  be  in- 
cluded in  the  census,  so  as  to  increase  the  taxtes  of  the  States  to 
which  they  belonged  ?  Here  arose  a  question  which  it  was  found 
could  only  be  settled  by  both  parties  yielding  something,  and  at 
length  the  principle  of  an  enumeration  of  three-fifths  of  the  slaves 
was  agreed  to.*  The  constitutional  provision  accordingly  stands 
thus;  "Representatives  and  direct  taxes  shall  be  apportioned 
among  the  several  States,  which  may  be  included  within  this  Union, 
according  to  their  respective  numbers,  which  shall  be  determined  by 
adding  to  the  whole  number  of  free  persons,  including  those  bound 
to  service  for  a  term  of  years,  and  ^excluding  Indians  not  taxed,  three- 
fifths  of  all  other  persons/'f 

This  is  the  famous  Compromise.  Believed  by  the  free  States  at  the 
time  to  be  comparatively  unimportant,  because  having  reference  to  a 
merely  temporary  state  of  things,  it  has  come  to  be  the  lodging-place 
of  the  leading  policy  of  the  Government,  arid  bids  fair  to  annul  the 
purpose  for  which  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of  America 
was  declared  to  be  ordained  and  established ;  viz ;  "to  form  a  more 
perfect  union,  establish  justice,  insure  domestic  tranquillity,  provide 
for  the  common  defence,  promote  the  general  welfare,  and  secure 
the  blessings  of  liberty/' 

Three  things  are  observable  as  to  this  most  unfortunate  measure* 

1.  It  was  a  compromise  in  which  the  free  States  have    received 

nothing  in  return  for  what  they  yielded  ;  a  bargain,  in  which  payment 

has  been  made  only  on  one  side.     The  free  States  agreed  to  allow 

a  representation  for  three-fifths  of  the  negroes  in  the  popular  branch 

*  In  respect  to  taxation,  this  was  but  a  continuation  of  the  plan  which  had  been 
adopted  on  the  revisal  of  the  terms  of  confederation  in  1783.  At  that  time  various 
plans  were  brought  forward  for  including  slaves  in  the  census  of  persons,  as  part  of 
the  basis  of  taxation.  Different  proposals  were  made  to  enumerate  slaves,  in  the 
proportion  of  four  as  equivalent  to  three  freemen  ;  four  to  one  ;  two  to  one ;  and 
three  to  two.  The  proposition  of  five  to  three  was  finally  agreed  to,  on  the  mo- 
tion of  Mr.  Madison. 

t  Art.  1,  §  2. 


THE    COMPROMISE.  O 

of  the  national  Legislature,  in  consideration  of  taxes  being  paid 
by  the  Slave  States  in  the  same  proportion.  But,  as  things  have 
turned  out,  they  have  received  no  quid  for  their  enormous  9^0.  It 
was  expected  that  the  government  would  be  supported,  in  great  part 
at  least,  by  direct  taxation.  But  a  better  revenue  policy  was  imme- 
diately adopted.  The  government  has  been  almost  wholly  main- 
tained by  the  duties  on  imported  articles,  aided  by  the  comparative- 
ly small  income  from  the  sales  of  the  public  lands.  No  direct  tax 
has  been  levied  except  towards  the  close  of  the  war  of  1812,  and  a 
tax  of  two  millions  in  1798.  The  constitutional  provision,  so  far 
as  it  went  to  compensate  the  Free  States  for  the  sacrifice  they  made, 
is  a  dead  fetter.  The  Slave  States  have  enjoyed  their  purchase, 
and  have  not  paid  its  price. 

2.  It  was  expected  by  both  parties  to  prove  a  merely  temporary 
arrangement.     The  institution  to  which  it  related,  was  believed  to 
be  doomed.     Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  in  their  small  way,  did 
not  give  up  the  idea  of  holding  on  to  slavery,  but  the  whole  current 
of  opinion  in  the  more  considerable  States  was  the  other  way.     Ac- 
cordingly, the  word  slave  or  slavery  is  not  used  in  the  Constitution, 
either  in   the  compromise  article,  or  in  the  only  other  provision  in 
which  the  institution  is  referred  to,  that  for  the  restoration  of  fu- 
gitives.     The  Constitution  was  not  allowed  to  record  the  word, 
because  it  was  understood  that  the  thing  was  soon  to  perish,  and 
the  Constitution  ought  not  to  enshrine  its  detestable  memory.       It 
was  a  great  question  in   the  Convention,  whether  and   when  the 
Federal  Government  should  have  power  to  abolish  the  foreign  Slave 
Trade.     The  arrangement  finally  fixed  on  was,  that  it  might  abolish 
that  trade  in  1808.    Every  one  who  reads  the  debates  on  the  subject, 
sees  that  the  speakers  regarded  the  questions  of  the  cessation  of  the 
foreign  Slave  Trade,  and  the  cessation  of  Slavery  in  the  United  States, 
as  substantially  one  and  the  same,  as  differing  only  in  the  particular 
that,  in  point  of  time,  one  would  be  a  little  in  advance  of  the  other. 

3.  No  one  dreamed  that  even  for  the  short  time  the  arrangement 
was  expected  to  last,  it  was  to  have  any  application  except  to  the 
original  thirteen   States.       It  was  felt  to  be  a  very  hard  bargain  for 
the  free  States,  any  way.     Governeur  Morris,  of  Pennsylvania,  said 
in  the  Convention,  that  "  he  would  sooner  submit  himself  to  a  tax 
for  paying  for  all  the  negroes  in  the  United  States,  than  saddle  pos- 
terity with  such  a  Constitution."     "  He  never  would  concur  in  up- 
holding domestic  slavery.      It  was  a  nefarious  institution."     "  The 
admission  of  slaves  into  the   representation,  when   fairly  explained, 
comes  to  this,  that  the  inhabitant  of  Georgia   and   South  Carolina 
who  goes  to  the  coast  of  Africa,  arid  in  defiance  of  the  most  sacred 
laws  of  humanity,  tears  away  his  fellow-creatures  from  their  dearest 
connexions,  and  damns  them  to  the  most  cruel  bondage,  shall  have 
more  votes  in  a  government  instituted  for  protection  of  the  rights  of 
mankind,  than  the  citizen   of  Pennsylvania  or  New  Jersey,  who 


6  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

views  with  a  laudable  horror  so  nefarious  a  practice."*  But  no  one 
imagined  that  other  communities,  beyond  the  then  existing  bounds 
of  the  States,  were  to  come  in  and  claim  a  share  in  the  agreement. 
The  delegates  from  the  free  States  saw  the  evil  and  sacrifice  to  be 
enormous.  But  they  thought  they  saw  to  the  bottom  of  it.  Their 
posterity  have  reason  to  know  that  they  were  grievously  mistaken. 
The  opinions  that  prevailed  respecting  the  short  duration  of  the 
evil  that  had  been  assented  to,  appear  in  the  debates  of  the  State 
Conventions  for  adopting  the  Constitution.  Judge  Dawes  said,  in 
the  Massachusetts  Convention,  "  it  would  not  do  to  abolish  slavery 
by  an  act  of  Congress,  in  a  moment,  and  so  destroy  what  our  South- 
ern brethren  consider  as  property.  But  we  may  say,  that  although 
slavery  is  not  smitten  by  an  apoplexy,  yet  it  has  received  a  mortal 
wound,  and  will  die  of  a  consumption."!  "  After  the  year  1808," 
said  Mr.  Wilson,  in  the  Pennsylvania  Convention,  "  the  Congress 
will  have  power  to  prohibit  the  importation  of  slaves,  notwithstand- 
ing the  disposition  of  any  State  to  the  contrary.  I  consider  this  as 
laying  the  foundation  for  banishing  slavery  out  of  this  country  ;  and, 
though  the  period  is  more  distant  than  I  could  wish,  yet  it  will  pro- 
duce the  same  kind,  gradual  change,  which  was  produced  in  Penn- 
sylvania. *****  In  the  mean  time,  the  new  States  which  are 
to  be  formed,  will  be  under  the  control  of  Congress  in  this  particular ; 
and  slaves  will  never  be  introduced  among  them."J  On  the  other 
hand,  the  doctrine  that  the  general  government  had  no  power  over 
the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States,  was  unknown  in  those  times. 
-  In  the  Convention,  the  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  gentlemen  clam- 
ored for  the  clause  containing  the  denial  of  such  a  power.$  But  it 
was  steadily  denied  them.  "  There  is  no  clause  in  the  Constitution," 
said  Mr.  George  Mason  in  the  Virginia  Convention,  "  that  will  pre- 
vent the  northern  and  eastern  States  from  meddling  with  our  whole 
property  in  slaves.  There  is  a  clause  to  prohibit  the  importation 
of  slaves  after  twenty  years,  but  there  is  no  provision  made  for  secur- 
ing to  the  Southern  States  those  they  now  possess.  ***** 
There  ought  to  be  a  clause  in  the  Constitution  to  secure  us  that 
property,  which  we  have  acquired  under  our  former  laws,  and  the 
loss  of  which  would  bring  ruin  on  a  great  many  people. "|[  Patrick 
Henry  "  asked,  why  it  was  omitted  to  secure  us  that  property  in 
slaves,  which  we  held  now  ?  He  feared  its  omission  was  done  with 
design.  They  might  lay  such  heavy  taxes  on  slaves,  as  would  amount 
to  emancipation.  ******  Imposts  (or  duties)  and  excises, 
were  to  be  uniform.  But  this  uniformity  did  not  extend  to  taxes. 
This  might  compel  the  Southern  States  to  liberate  their  negroes. 
He  wished  this  property  therefore  to  be  guarded."1l  In  a  debate  in 

*  Madison  papers,  1263,  &c. 
t  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  i.  p.  60. 
t  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  pp.  250,  251. 
§   Madison,  1187,  1447. 
||  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  ii.  p.  212. 
IT  Ibid.  p.  337. 


SLAVERY     ABOVE    THE    TRIAL    BY    JURY.  7 

the  Federal  House  of  Representatives,  in  March,  1790,  on  the  pre- 
sentation of  a  memorial  of  the  Quakers  on  the  slave-trade,  Mr. 
Madison  "adverted  to  the  Western  country,  and  the  cession  of 
Georgia,  in  which  Congress  have  certainly  the  power  to  regulate  the 
subject  of  slavery,  which  shows  that  gentlemen  are  mistaken  in  sup- 
posing that  Congress  cannot  constitutionally  interfere  in  the  business 
in  any  degree  whatever." 


NO.  III. 

FIRST  STEP  FORWARD  IN    THE    LEGISLATURE.— ABOLITION 

OF  JURY  TRIALS  FOR  THE  QUESTION  OF 

PERSONAL  LIBERTY. 

EVERY  person  m  the  United  States  is  the  subject  of  two  govern- 
ments ;  and  it  is  remarkable  how  different  his  political  relations  are, 
according  as  he  is  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  one  or  the  other. 
We.  of  this  Commonwealth,  considered  as  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts, are  free  citizens  of  an  excellently  constituted  republic.  Con- 
sidered as  people  of  the  United  States,  we,  with  the  rest  of  the 
so-called  free  people,  both  of  the  free  and  of  the  slave  States, 
amounting  to  some  eighteen  millions  in  number,  are  subjects  of  an 
oligarchy  of  the  most  odious  possible  description ;  an  oligarchy 
composed  of  about  one  hundred  thousand  owners  of  men.*  There 
are  perhaps  three  hundred  thousand  slaveholders  in  the  country. 
Allowing  for  minors  and  women,  probably  not  far  from  one-third  of 
the  number  are  voters  ;  and  they  administer  our  affairs. 

The  quiet  and  steady  process  by  which  this  rather  material  change 
in  the  character  of  the  Federal  Government  was  brought  about,  is 
not  more  remarkable  than  the  result.  Never  was  it  better  shown 
what  great  things  union,  perseverance,  and  impudence  will  do. 

It  is  often  wisdom,  in  the  prosecution  of  a  scheme,  to  put  forth  a 
thoroughly  outrageous  proposal  at  the  beginning.  If  it  is  disallow- 
ed, and  cannot  be  carried,  you  fall  back  on  something  less  exorbi- 
tant, which  then  has  an  air  of  moderation  and  compromise.  If  on 
the  other  hand  you  succeed  to  carry  it,  your  boldness,  and  the  facile 
surrender  of  the  other  party,  make  a  capital  prestige  for  the  future. 

Four  years  had  not  passed  after  the  Federal  Constitution  went 
into  operation,  before  the  Southern  States  tried  the  virtue  of  this 
policy,  and  tried  it  with  an  easy  success,  that  must  have  amazed 
themselves  at  the  time,  and  has  not  been  lost  upon  their  subsequent 

*  Possibly  this  estimate  may  be  too  small.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  made  on 
an  estimate  of  three  hundred  thousand  as  the  whole  number  of  slave-owners,  which 
many  considered  to  be  too  high  by  fifty  thousand.  The  number  of  slave-holding 
voters  ought  by  all  means  to  be  ascertained  in  the  census  of  1850.  We  shall  then 
be  able  to  reason  more  closely  on  the  matter. 


8  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

proceedings.  On  the  12th  day  of  February,  1793,  Congress  enact- 
ed a  few  to  carry  into  effect  the  provision  of  the  Constitution  res- 
pecting the  delivering  up  of  persons  "  held  to  labor  in  one  State 
under  the  laws  thereof,  escaping  into  another."  This  law,  which  is 
still  in  force,  provides  that 

"  When  a  person  held  to  labor  in  any  of  the  United  States,  or  in  either  of  the 
territories  on  the  northwest,  or  south  of  the  river  Ohio,  under  the  laws  thereof, 
shall  escape  into  any  other  of  the  said  States  or  territory,  the  person  to  whom 
such  labor  or  service  may  be  due,  his  agent  or  attorney,  is  hereby  empowered  to 
seize  or  arrest  such  fugitive  from  labor,  and  to  take  him  or  her  before  any  judge 
of  the  Circuit  or  District  Courts  of  the  United  States,  residing  or  being  within 
the  State,  or  before  any  magistrate  of  a  county,  city,  or  town  corporate,  wherein 
such  seizure  or  arrest  shall  be  made,  and  upon  proof  to  the  satisfaction  of  such 
judge  or  magistrate,  either  by  oral  testimony  or  affidavit,  taken  before  and  certi- 
fied by  a  magistrate  of  any  such  State  or  territory,  that  the  person  so  seized  or 
arrested  doth,  under  the  laws  of  the  State  or  territory  from  which  he  or  she  fled, 
owe  service  or  labor  to  the  person  claiming  him  or  her,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of 
such  judge  or  magistrate  to  give  a  certificate  thereof  to  such  claimant,  his  agent 
or  attorney,  which  shall  be  sufficient  warrant  for  removing  the  said  fugitive  from 
labor  to  the  State  or  territory  from  which  he  or  she  fled." 

If  my  neighbor  sues  me  for  twenty-one  dollars,  I  have  a  right  to 
carry  the  question  to  a  jury.  The  Constitution  has  declared  that 
I  am  entitled  to  better  protection  against  an  unjust  claim  to  that 
amount,  than  what  might  be  found  in  the  wisdom  or  integrity  of 
any  town  or  county  magistrate.  Not  so  with  my  liberty,  which  I 
care  more  for  than  I  do  for  twenty-one  dollars.  Let  a  stranger  ap- 
pear and  say  that  he  comes  from  a  distant  State,  where  man  holds 
fellow-men  in  bondage,  and  let  him  persuade  a  stupid  justice  of  the 
peace,  or  bribe  a  base  one,  to  declare  that  I  am  the  stranger's  runa- 
way slave,  and  there  is  no  lawful  power  in  Massachusetts  to  save 
me  from  being  conveyed  away  in  handcuffs,  and  sold  in  Washington 
or  New  Orleans  under  the  whip.  Armed  with  a  paltry  justice's 
warrant,  he  shall  take  my  wife  from  my  side,  or  my  infant  from  its 
cradle,  and  if  I  offer  resistance,  he  is  clothed  with  the  whole  power 
of  the  country  to  strike  me  down.  Do  not  say  that  the  thing  would  be 
prevented,  the  justice's  warrant  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
Very  likely  it  would.  But,  if  prevented,  it  would  have  to  be  by 
club  law,  which  is  not  the  kind  of  dependence  that  we,  the  law- 
abiding  people  of  Massachusetts,  approve  or  like  to  resort  to.  Do 
not  say  that  it  is  not  likely  any  justice  of  the  peace  will  be  cheated 
into  doing  such  a  wrong.  Justices  of  the  peace  are  not  all  Solo- 
mons. There  are  Justice  Shallows  even  in  Massachusetts,  and 
those,  too,  with  whom  a  dark  complexion  makes  a  bad  prima  fade 
case.  Do  not  say  that  justices  are  always  above  bribery.  There 
was  a  story  in  1843  that  a  representative  sold  his  vote,  and  with  it 
the  administration  of  the  Commonwealth  for  the  year,  for  a  suit  of 
clothes ;  and  Governor  Morton  tossed  him  a  justice's  commission 
into  the  bargain.  Do  not  say,  that  it  is  not  likely  such  treatment 
of  a  white  freeman  will  be  attempted.  There  is  the  law ;  and  if 
they  are  not  often  so  treated,  it  is  no  thanks  to  their  own  prudence 


LOUISIANA    AND    MISSOURI. 

or  self-respect.  There  is  the  law,  it  says  nothing  of  color  ;  and  by 
it  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts  is  just  as  liable  to  be  carried  away 
and  sold  in  the  Southern  shambles,  as  the  blackest  or  least  consid- 
erable citizen  in  the  Commonwealth.  The  law  may  be,  for  white 
people,  as  helpless  as  it  is  insolent ;  but  it  threatens  and  insults  Har- 
rison Gray  Otis  as  much  as  his  boot-black ;  George  Putnam,  of  Rox- 
bury,  as  much  as  his  respectable  namesake,  of  a  different  complex- 
ion, in  School  street.  Do  not  say  that  it  is  not  likely  black  freemen 
will  be  often  treated  in  this  way.  If  the  blacks  had  a  fair  chance 
to  tell  their  own  story  in  Pennsylvania,  we  should  know,  better  than 
we  now  do,  how  true  that  statement  would  be.  At  all  events,  the 
free  States  owe  it  to  their  good  faith  to  their  own  citizens,  to  their 
decent  standing  before  the  world,  to  their  tolerable  credit  with  pos- 
terity, to  protect  their  citizens  against  being  carried  away  as  slaves, 
and  to  protect  the  liberty  of  the  humblest  citizen  as  effectually  as 
of  the  most  exalted.  Did  ever  a  decent  government  before  decline 
that  duty  ?  Is  there  any  parallel  to  this  monstrous  law  on  the 
statute  book  of  any  civilized  people  ?  Did  any  free  government, 
civilized  or  not,  ever  before  consent  that  its  constituents  should  hold 
their  liberty  by  such  a  tenure  ?  Did  bloated  arrogance  ever  before 
make  such  a  claim  on  freemen  ?  Did  freemen  ever  before  give  up 
their  securities,  and  agree  to  a  gross  affront,  with  so  easy  a  com- 
pliance ?  /£&3  ? 

Three  years  ago,  Massachusetts  took  this  thing  in  hand.  But  the 
remedy  she  applied  was  necessarily  an  altogether  imperfect  one. 
It  does  not  touch  the  power  to  grant  warrants,  given  by  the  Act  of 
Congress  to  the  Circuit  and  District  Courts,  and  to  town  and  county 
magistrates.  She  made  it  hazardous  for  her  own  justices  to  do  this 
dirty  work.  But  she  could  not  take  from  them  the  power  vested  by 
the  United  States  law  ;  and  should  any  one  of  them,  through  igno- 
rance or  for  a  sufficient  consideration,  lend  himself  to  a  kidnapper's 
job,  his  warrant  would  be  valid  against  all  the  world.  Such  are  the 
legal  safeguards  of  liberty,  in  "  Columbia,  happy  land." 


NO.  IV. 

RE-INFORCED  WITH  FRENCH  AND  SPANISH  AUXILIARIES. 

THE  free  States  were  tractable ;  they  had  proved  themselves  so 
in  the  measures  which  have  been  referred  to.  The  slave  States 
were  ambitious.  They  became  avaricious  too.  New  articles  of 
culture  were  introduced  ;  labor  became  more  valuable  ;  the  price  of 
slaves  rose  ;  and  the  power  to  hold  on  to  them  became  of  more  con- 
sideration. In  the  convention,  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  had  in- 


10  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

sisted  that  the  slave  trade  should  not  be  prohibited  for  twenty  years, 
within  which  time  they  expected  to  be  able  to  supply  themselves 
sufficiently.  They  made  good  use  of  their  reprieve,  and  got  pretty 
well  provided  before  it  was  out.  But  meanwhile  a  vast  interest  was 
growing  up,  requiring  an  immensely  increased  supply  for  the  south- 
ern country.  Virginia  was  now  to  have  her  harvest.  Her  tobacco 
land  was  exhausted,  but  her  human  stock  was  fruitful.  The  foreign 
competition  being  destroyed  by  the  prohibition  of  the  African  trade, 
the  domestic  market  prospered.  Virginia  became  the  Guinea  coast 
of  America. 

Rice,  introduced  into  South  Carolina  in  1693,  was  the  first  im- 
portant staple  of  the  extreme  south ;  the  average  annual  quantity 
exported  from  that  State  in  the  last  years  before  the  Revolution  was 
one  hundred  and  forty-two  thousand  barrels.  Indigo  was  introdu- 
ced from  the  West  Indies  in  1741  or  1742,  and  became  the  most 
profitable  article  of  cultivation,  the  annual  export  before  the  Revo- 
lution amounting  to  more  than  a  million  of  pounds.  At  the  end  of 
about  forty  years  more,  some  experiments  were  made  in  the  culture 
of  cotton,  little  suspected  then  of  being  destined  to  be  for  so  long  a 
time  the  preponderating  element  in  American  politics.  In  1783, 
just  after  the  peace,  eight  bales  of  cotton  were  seized  by  the  custom 
house  at  Liverpool,  it  not  being  believed  that  America  could  raise 
so  large  a  quantity  of  that  product.  In  1789,  the  cotton  crop  of 
the  United  States  (that  is,  substantially,  of  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia)  amounted  to  a  million  of  pounds  ;  in  1801,  to  nearly  fifty 
millions;  in  1811  (Louisiana  having  been  purchased  meanwhile), 
to  eighty  millions  ;  in  1821,  to  a  hundred  and  eighty  millions  ;  in 
1831,  to  three  hundred  and  eighty-five  millions;  and  at  the  present 
time  it  is  not  less  than  a  thousand  millions,  being  considerably  more 
than  that  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world  together.  The  inferior  cotton 
of  the  south-west  sold  in  1818  at  thirty-five  and  forty  cents  a 
pound.  Slaves,  the  makers  of  cotton,  of  course  rose  in  value  with 
what  they  raised.  The  aggregate  value  of  slaves  in  the  southern 
States  was  estimated  by  Mr.  Gerry  in  1790  at  ten  millions  of  dol- 
lars.* Within  a  few  years  Mr.  Clay  has  estimated  it  at  twelve 
hundred  millions.  Justice  and  liberty,  it  was  clear,  would  have  to 
maintain  themselves  against  fearful  odds.  The  South  Carolina 
coinage  of  blood  to  drachmas  was  a  magnificent  reality.  The  Vir- 
ginian philanthropy  of  abolition,  so  vivid  in  1787,  had  become  as  a 
dream  when  one  awaketh. 

Such  an  interest  coveted  more  securities  than  the  Constitution 
gave  it.  Such  an  element  of  political  power  was  tempting  to  en- 
terprise, and  asked  for  more  practical  expansion.  Two  votes  in  the 
Federal  Senate  for  a  new  Slave  State,  three  freemen's  votes,  in 
constituting  the  Federal  House  of  Representatives,  for  every  five 
human  cattle,  these  were  mighty  means  for  consolidating  the  slave 

*  Elliot's  Debates,  vol.  iv.  part  2,  p.  214. 


ADMISSION    OF    LOUISIANA.  1  1 

despotism,  and  subordinating  to  it  the  future  policy  and  patronage 
of  the  country. 

In  the  session  of  Congress  of  1810—1811,  a  measure  of  the  bold- 
est character  was  resorted  to.  A  bill  was  introduced  "  to  enable  the 
people  of  the  territory  of  Orleans  to  form  a  Constitution  and  State 
Government,  and  for  the  admission  of  such  State  into  the  Union." 
The  period  was  one  of  extreme  and  passionate  agitation.  The 
public  mind  had  been  intensely  plied  with  ultra  theories,  and  with 
sympathy  in  the  amazing  struggles  of  Europe.  It  was  a  time  little 
favorable  to  cairn  adherence  to  principles,  and  consideration  of  re- 
mote consequences.  The  Slave  States  moved  in  solid  column,  and 
dictated  to  a  large  party  at  the  North.  The  Constitution  provided 
that  "  new  States  may  be  admitted  by  the  Congress  into  this  Union." 
In  vain  was  it  urged,  that,  from  the  language  of  the  rest  of  the 
section,  it  was  unavoidable  to  understand  this  provision  as  applica- 
ble only  to  territory  within  the  old  States,  the  original  parties  to  the 
Constitution.  In  vain  was  it  insisted  that,  while  other  powers  had 
been  withheld  from  Congress  with  so  much  jealousy  by  the  thirteen 
States,  parties  to  the  compact,  it  never  could  have  been  the  inten- 
tion to  invest  that  legislature  with  a  prerogative  so  enormous  as  that 
of  admitting  other  partners  at  will,  to  introduce  new  elements,  in- 
terests, and  responsibilities,  and  change  the  proportions  of  power 
among  the  old  ones.  Mr.  Jefferson,  not  personally  over-scrupulous, 
but  affected  by  his  responsibility  before  the  world,  avowed  that 
there  was  no  power  in  the  Constitution  to  carry  out  his  measure,  and 
desired  that,  for  its  ratification,  an  amendment  might  be  obtained, 
through  the  forms  constitutionally  prescribed.*  But  the  compunc- 
tions of  trickery  and  the  resistance  of  patriotism  were  alike  to  no 
purpose.  With  the  help  of  its  duped  or  designing  allies  at  the 
North,  Slavery  was  in  power,  and,  as  it  had  its  fervid  will,  it  had 
its  easy  way.  The  French  and  Spanish  colony  of  Louisiana,  with 
its  breeds  of  all  tongues  and  all  mixtures,  became  a  member  of  the 
Federal  Union,  with  seats  for  its  slave  representation  in  actuality, 
and  the  prospect  of  an  indefinite  enlargement  of  it  in  future ;  and 
a  principle  was  established,  equally  ready  for  application,  as  future 
circumstances  might  permit,  to  Texas,  Guatemala,  Algiers,  or  Mo- 
zambique. And  this  under  the  forms  of  the  Constitution  !  Imag- 
ine the  statesmen  and  people  of  Massachusetts  in  1787,  descendants 
of  English  Commonwealth's-men,  fresh  from  the  fields  of  cis-altan- 
tic  freedom,  to  which  they  had  sent  one  soldier  in  every  three,  im- 

*  "  When  I  consider  that  the  limits  of  the  United  States  aje  precisely  fixed  by  the 
treaty  of  1783,  and  that  the  Constitution  expressly  declares  itself  to  be  made  for  the 
United  States,  I  cannot  help  believing  the  intention  was  not  to  permit  Congress  to 
admit  into  the  Union  new  States  which  should  be  formed  out  of  the  territory,  for 
which,  and  under  whose  authority  alone,  they  were  then  acting.  I  do  not  believe 
it  was  meant  that  they  might  receive  England,  Ireland,  Holland,  &c.  into  it." 
Letter  to  Wilson  C.  Nicholas,  Sept.  7th  1803.  "  Memoir,  Correspondence,  and 
Miscellanies."  Vol.  iv.  p.  3.  See  also  letter  to  Levi  Lincoln  of  August  30,  1803. 
Ibid.  p.  1. 


12  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

agine  them  agreeing  to  an  instrument  understood  to  include  any 
power  to  bring  a  rout  of  vagabond  West-Indian  Frenchmen  and 
Spaniards,  slaves  and  all,  into  their  grave  confederacy. 

Ten  years  later  drew  the  curtain  for  act  the  second.  Things 
were  ripe  in  1820  for  another  push  of  the  ever  prompt  and  watch- 
ful Slave  Power.  Mr.  Monroe's  administration  was  popular.  The 
Federal  party  had  broken  down  at  the  close  of  the  war.  The  re- 
turning prosperity  of  the  country  had  turned  the  mind  of  the  in- 
ventive and  quiet  North  to  industry  and  gain,  while  the  political 
ambition  of  the  South  never  lost  sight  of  its  purposes.  Concilia- 
tion was  the  order  of  day,  and  conciliation,  with  the  South,  always 
means  complete  sacrifice  on  the  other  part.  The  ordinance  of 
1787,  passed  when  almost  all  the  States  were  honest,  and  excluding 
slavery  forever  from  the  region  between  the  Ohio  and  the  Missis- 
sippi, had  established  the  dominion  of  freedom  in  the  new  States 
down  to  the  thirty-seventh  degree  of  North  latitude.  But  the  pur- 
chase of  Louisiana  was  to  be  put  to  yet  better  use.  The  patriotic 
party  in  Congress  stood  for  the  safe-guards  of  the  federal  compact, 
and  insisted  that  Missouri  should  not  be  admitted  as  a  partner  in  the 
Union  with  a  constitution  which,  by  recognizing  slavery,  should 
break  down  the  compromises  of  the  original  partnership.  Consid- 
ering the  tone  of  the  times,  and  the  comparative  union  and  disci- 
pline of  the  two  parties,  the  battle  for  liberty  was  not  ill  fought. 
The  issue  was  doubtful  for  a  while,  and  the  right  did  all  but  prevail. 
But  Mr.  Clay  put  in  with  one  of  his  compromises.  Slavery  en- 
trenched itself  anew  in  the  West,  up  to  forty  degrees  and  a  half,  a 
little  higher  than  the  latitude  of  Philadelphia.  Two  more  votes 
were  secured  for  slavery  in  the  Senate,  and  a  further  representation 
in  the  other  House,  with  a  prospect  of  indefinite  extension  in  future, 
as  long  as  the  vast  tracts  of  the  French  purchase  should  hold  out  to 
be  parcelled  and  peopled.  New  England  votes — yes,  three  votes 
from  Massachusetts  —  helped  to  do  the  deed.  Pertinently,  albeit 
impertinently,  did  John  Randolph  say  in  the  debate  on  that  occa- 
sion, "  we  do  not  govern  them  [the  people  of  the  North,]  by  our 
black  slaves,  but  by  their  own  white  slaves.  We  know  what  we 
are  doing.  We  have  conquered  you  once,  and  we  can,  and  we 
will,  conquer  you  again.  Ay,  Sir,  we  will  drive  you  to  the  wall, 
and  when  we  have  you  there  once  more,  we  mean  to  keep  you  there, 
and  nail  you  down,  like  base  money." 

When  one  reads  in  the  Convention  for  forming  the  Constitution, 
and  in  the  State  Conventions  for  its  adoption,  how  undoubting  was 
the  expectation,  that  under  the  effect  of  its  principles  and  provisions 
slavery  was  soon  to  die,  and  how  little  it  was  dreamed  by  the  people 
of  that  day,  that  it  was  ever  to  be  an  active  element  in  the  politics 
of  the  country,  it  tasks  the  imagination  to  conceive  how  they  would 
have  looked,  had  they  been  told  that  in  the  first  sixty  years  it  should 
have  so  possessed  itself  of  the  Government,  that  during  only  twelve 
years  a  President  from  the  free  States  had  been  tolerated,  that  a 


PLOT  FOR  ANNEXING  TEXAS.  13 

vast  majority  of  the  high  offices  in  all  departments,  including  nearly 
three-fourths  of  the  offices  in  the  army  and  navy,  had  been  held  by 
slave-owners,  that  slavery  had  been  the  great  dictator  of  its  policy, 
foreign  and  domestic,  and  that  at  this  moment  none  but  slaveholders 
were  ministers  of  the  nation  at  any  foreign  court,  though  there  are 
more  than  three  millions  of  voters  in  the  country,  and  only  one 
hundred  thousand  of  them  hold  slaves. 


NO.  v. 

« 
PLOT  FOR  ANOTHER  ALLIANCE. 


TEXAS,  as  now  claimed,  with  the  Rio  Grande  for  its  boundary 
from  the  mouth  to  the  source,  according  to  the  map  published  by 
order  of  Congress,  embraces  an  area  of  about  tljree  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  square  miles,  a  territory  more  than  half  as  large 
again  as  that  of  France,  and  enough  to  divide  into  forty-five  States3 
each  of  the  size  of  Massachusetts.  What  will  be  the  boundary 
claimed  next  week,  we  can  better  tell  when  next  week  comes. 

The  story  of  the  nefarious  proceedings  of  the  Slave  Power  to 
strengthen  itself  with  this  immense  acquisition  is  all  recent,  but 
events  have  trodden  on  each  other's  heels  so  close  that  the  later 
have  kept  driving  the  earlier  out  of  mind.  It  is  therefore  worth 
while  very  briefly  to  recapitulate  some  of  the  principal. 

In  1821,  the  year  of  the  erection  of  Missouri  into  a  State,  Mex- 
ico became  independent  of  Old  Spain.  In  1824,  in  the  honest 
spirit  of  her  new  liberty,  she  decreed  a  prospective  manumission  of 
slaves.  This  was  followed  in  1829  by  an  immediate  and  complete 
emancipation,  a  measure  which  was  shortly  afterwards  ratified  for 
itself  by  the  Province  of  Texas. 

The  vigilant  South  was  moved.  A  people  of  freemen  on  the 
South-Western  border ;  what  an  example  !  A  sparsely  peopled 
and  productive  country;  what  a  prize  for  the  lacklands !  what  a 
market  for  human  chattels  1  what  an  ally  for  the  Slave  Power ! 

The  fact  was  no  sooner  known  than  Mr.  Benton,  under  the  sig- 
natures of  "  Americanus"  and  "  La  Salle,"  broached  the  scheme  of 
annexation  in  the  Missouri  newspapers,  and  his  essays  were  briskly 
circulated  through  the  Slave  States.  He  urged,  1.  The  importance 
of  providing  new  securities  for  the  slave  interest  in  the  national 
councils ;  2.  The  necessity  of  opening  a  new  field  for  slave  cultiva- 
tion, and  a  new  market  for  men ;  3.  The  insecurity  and  deprecia- 
tion of  slave  property  incident  to  the  contiguity  of  a  free  republic. 


14  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


*.       «t»r.  ,, 

President  Jackson  immediately  instructed  Mr.  Poinsett,  then  min- 
ister in  Mexico,  to  make  proposals  for  the  purchase  of  Texas,  author- 
ising him  to  bid  for  it  as  high  as  $'4,000,000  or  even  $5,000,000; 
u  so  strong,"  wrote  Mr.  Van  Buren,  Secretary  of  State,  "  is  the 
President's  conviction  of  the  importance  and  even  necessity  "  of  the 
acquisition.  Mexico  was  now  reduced  to  great  straits  in  the  war  for 
the  maintenance  of  her  independence,  and  the  Envoy  was  accord- 
ingly informed  that  "  the  present  moment  is  regarded  by  us  as  an 
auspicious  one  to  secure  the  cession."  She  was  plied  at  the  same 
time  with  menaces  for  delay  in  settling  some  pecuniary  claims,  and 
for  alleged  wrong  to  some  Americans  who  had  been  ordered  from 
one  of  the  ports  into  the  interior  on  an  alarm  of  a  Spanish  invasion  ; 
and  she  was  informed  that  no  treaty  of  commerce  would  ever  be 
made  without  a  stipulation  or>  her  part  for  the  restoration  of  fugitive 
slaves.  She  however  declined  the  bribe,  and  withstood  the  threats. 
Mr.  Anthony  Butler  succeeded  Mr.  Poinsett  in  the  mission,  and  from 
.  time  so  time,  through  six  years,  renewed  the  attempt  at  a  bargain, 
but  with  no  better  success  than  his  predecessor. 

Such  a  process  was  too  slow,  without  being  at  all  certain  either. 
A  surer  card  was  playing  all  the  while.  Early  in  1830,  it  was  an- 
nounced in  Arkansas  "on  authority  entitled  to  the  highest  credit 
[hinted  to  be  that  of  the  American  embassy],  that  no  hopes  need  be 
entertained  of  acquiring  Texas,  until  some  other  party,  more  friendly 
to  the  United  States,  shall  predominate  in  Mexico,  and  perhaps  not 
I  till  Texas  shall  throw  off  the  yoke  of  allegiance  to  that  government, 
rwElch  they  will  do  no  doubt  [that  is,  if  we  of  the  South-West  can 
make  them]  as  soon  as  they  shall  have  a  reasonable  pretext  for  so 
doing.  At  present  they  are  probably  subject  to  as  few  impositions 
and  exactions  as  any  people  under  the  sun."  In  the  same  year, 
General  Samuel  Houston,  formerly  Governor  of  Tennessee,  and  an 
intimate  friend  of  President  Jackson,  betook  himself  to  Texas,  and 
a  Louisiana  paper  gave  out  that  he  "  had  gone  to  raise  a  revolu- 
tion," and  that  we  might  expect  "  shortly  to  hear  of  his  raising  his 
flag."  The  conspiracy  of  the  Slave  Power  against  an  unoffending 
neighbor,  entitled  to  sympathy  by  every  claim  except  that  she  was 
consistent  in  her  profession  of  attachment  to  free  principles,  went 
busily  to  work.  Strong  facts  have  been  produced  to  prove  that  the 
strings  were  pulled  by  President  Jackson  and  his  club  at  Washing- 
ton. But  that  question  is  not  material  to  the  present  purpose. 
Slavery  was  the  conspirator,  whether  Jackson  and  his  intimates 
were  more  or  less  its  agents.  So  confident  was  the  General  of  get- 
ting the  country  one  way  or  another,  that,  according  to  Mr.  Hunt, 
the  Texan  envoy,  "  he  tendered  the  office  of  Governor  of  the  Ter- 
ritory to  the  late  Governor  H.  G.  Burton,  of  North  Carolina,  to  be 
entered  upon  as  soon  as  the  treaty  of  cession  should  be  completed."* 
To  get  up  an  insurrection  in  Texas  to  serve  as  a  pretence  for  inva- 

^P^      *  Letter  to  Mr.  Forsyth,  of  Sept,  12th,  1837. 


PLOT  FOR  ANNEXING  TEXAS.  15 

sion,  did  not  seem  a  very  easy  thing  ;  but  generally  where  there  is  an 
intense  will,  there  may  sooner  or  later  be  found  a  way.     Discontent, 
for  any  or  for  no  cause,  was  fomented  among  the  American  colo-  ] 
nists,  who,  as  early  as  1821,  had  been  brought  in  by  S.  T.  Austin,  ! 
under  a  contract  with  the  government.     Butler,  the  United  States  *' 
Charge  d'Affaires  at  Mexico,  was  conspicuously  busy  in  exciting  a 
disturbance.     Among  the  causes  of  complaint  at  last  produced  were, 
the  union  of  Coahuila  with  Texas  as  one  State ;  the  establishment 
of  Custom  Houses,  at  the  expiration  of  the  privilege  granted  to  the 
colonists  of  exemption  from  the  payment  of  duties  for  two  years ; 
the  establishment  of  centralism  in  the  place  of  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion in  1824, — on  all  accounts  a  judicious  measure  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  one  fairly  called  for  and  adopted  by  a  majority  of 
the  nation  ;  the  failure  "  to  secure,  on  a  firm  basis,  the  right  of  trial 
by  jury," — a  departure  from  its  own  system  of  jurisprudence,  which 
it  does  not  appear  that  the  government  had  ever  authorised  the 
Texan  colonists  to  expect,  but  which,  in  point  of  fact,  it  had  suffered 
them  to  enjoy ;  a  harsh  course  of  administration  on  the  part  of  the 
military  commandants ;  and  a  disallowance  of  the  exercise  of  any  i 
but  the  Catholic  religion, — a  rule  to  which  the  colonists  had  ex-  j 
pressly  consented  as  the  absolute  condition  of  their  receiving  their 
lands,  but  which  had  in  fact  not  been  enforced. 

In  December,  1835,  a  declaration  of  independence  was  adopted 
at  La  Bahia  or  Goliad,  by  about  ninety  persons,  not  pretending  to 
act  in  any  representative  capacity,  and  all  of  them  Americans,  to 
judge  from  iheir  names,  except  two.  In  March,  1836,  by  their 
recommendation  a  convention  of  delegates  met  at  a  place  called 
Washington,  ani!  issued  a  more  formal  declaration,  to  which  were 
subscribed  forty-fo\:r  names,  of  which  three  or  four  appear  to  have 
been  those  of  Mexicans.  "  For  a  portion  of  the  force  [to  fight 
Mexico]  we  must  look,'5  wrote  Houston,  "  to  the  United  States.  It 
cannot  come  too  soon."  Of  course  he  did  not  look  in  vain,  nor 
were  the  Campbells  long  in  coming.  In  defiance  of  the  faith  of 
treaties,  without  interruption  from  the  government,  military  expedi- 
tions were  openly  prepared,  and  proceeded  by  land  and  water  from 
the  United  States,  the  means  being  collected  at  public  meetings  as- 
sembled by  advertisements  in  the  newspapers.  In  New  Orleans 
and  other  Southern  cities,  parties  with  flags,  drums  and  fifes,  beat 
up  for  recruits  about  the  streets.  Troops  under  General  Gaines 
were  ordered  by  the  President  over  the  Texan  frontier,  to  keep 
watch  upon  the  Indians.  In  April  was  fought  the  battle  of  San  Ja- 
cinto,  in  which,  it  has  been  asserted  on  good  authority,  only  fifty 
men  out  of  the  eight  hundred  of  the  victorious  party  had  ever  had 
any  thing  to  do  with  Texas  till  they  went  thither  in  martial  array.* 
Fifteen-sixteenths  were  freebooters,  fresh  from  the  United  States. 

Texas  was  wrested  from  Mexico.     So  far  there  was  an  open  field 

*  North  American  Review,  vol.  xliii.  p.  254. 


16  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

for  further  operations.  Our  government  lost  no  time  in  acknowl- 
edging her  independence.  A  Resolution  to  that  effect,  presently 
introduced  by  Mr.  Walker,  Senator  from  Mississippi,  was  passed  in 
March,  1837. 


NO.  VI. 

NO  OUTSIDE  ROW  TO  THE  COTTON  FIELD. 

AFTER  the  defeat  of  Santa  Anna,  the  parties  concerned  were 
naturally  impatient  for  the  next  move.  Texas,  with  General  Hous- 
ton of  Tennessee  and  General  Hamilton  of  South  Carolina  in 
charge  of  its  affairs,  applied  for  admission  into  the  Federal  Union 
in  the  summer  of  1837.  But  the  fruit  was  not  yet  ripe.  The 
Northern  Democrats  were  not  yet  whipped  in.  Mr.  Van  Buren 
saw  that  the  thing  would  not  do,  for  never  did  fingers  feel  the 
pulse  of  the  nation  with  so  delicate  a  touch  as  did  those  of  the 
Northern  man  with  Southern  principles.  A  war  with  Mexico  too 
would  cost  money,  while  the  finances  were  in  a  state  of  utter  disor- 
der, and  specie  payments  had  been  suspended  by  the  banks. 
Accordingly,  Mr.  Forsyth  replied  to  the  Texan  envoy,  in  an  edify- 
ing strain  of  public  morality,  that  "  the  question  of  the  annexation 
of  a  foreign  independent  State  to  the  United  States  had  never  be- 
fore been  presented  to  this  government,"  and  that  "  powerful  and 
weighty  as  were  the  inducements  mentioned  by  General  Hunt, 
they  were  light  when  opposed  in  the  scale  of  reason  to  treaty 
obligations,  and  respect  for  that  integrity  of  character  by  which  the 
United  States  had  sought  to  distinguish  themselves." 

The  saying  of  a  member  of  Congress  that  President  Tyler's  was 
a.  parenthetical  administration,  which  might  be  taken  away  without 
injury  to  the  sense,  was  as  indefensible  as  it  was  witty.  On  the 
contrary,  it  was  the  distinction  of  that  foul  administration  to  stain 
the  American  annals  with  the  blackest  blot  they  ever  bore.  After 
the  retirement  of  Mr.  Webster  in  March  1843,  and  the  death  of 
Mr.  Legare,  Mr.  Upshur  of  Virginia  was  placed  in  July  in  the  De- 
partment of  State.  The  acquisition  of  Texas  had  been  one  of  Mr. 
Upshur's  long-cherished  dreams.  As  far  back  as  1829,  he  had  said 
in  the  Virginia  Convention,  "  The  value  of  slaves,  as  an  article  of 
property,  depends  much  on  the  state  of  the  market  abroad.  If  it 
should  be  our  lot  to  acquire  the  country  of  Texas,  their  price  will 
rise."  He  was  not  known  to  the  nation,  except  as  having  been 
selected  by  Duff  Green  to  be  the  editor  of  the  Southern  Review, 
had  he  succeeded  in  reviving  that  work  to  be  the  champion  of  the 
slaveholders'  policy. 


PLOT  FOR  ANNEXING  TEXAS.  17 

Mr.  Upshur  was  killed  by  the  Peace-Maker  in  the  following 
February,  and  it  then  first  became  known  how  the  seven  months  of 
his  administration  had  been  occupied.  With  his  recreant  master 
he  had  been  busy  from  the  first  moment  in  concocting  a  plot,  the 
danger  of  which  the  honest  part  of  the  nation  fondly  flattered 
themselves  had  passed  by,  and  in  profound  secresy  they  had  nursed 
it  almost  to  maturity.  Professing  to  have  been  informed  by  a  pri- 
vate letter  from  a  citizen  of  Maryland,  then  in  London,  —  which 
letter,  when  afterwards  called  for  by  the  Senate  from  Mr.  Secretary 
Calhoun,  was  not  to  be  found,  —  that  a  person,  "  deputed  by  the 
abolitionists  of  Texas  to  negotiate  with  the  British  government, 
had  seen  Lord  Aberdeen  and  submitted  his  projet  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  Texas,"  and  that  "  Lord  Aberdeen  had  agreed  that 
the  British  government  would  guaranty  the  payment  of  the  in- 
terest "  on  a  loan  for  this  purpose,  "  upon  condition  that  the  Texan 
government  would  abolish  slavery,"  he  wrote  (August  8th)  to  the 
American  Charge  in  Texas,  re-opening  the  question  of  annexation 
which  had  apparently  been  closed  by  Mr.  Van  Buren  six  years  be- 
fore. He  represented  that  "  the  establishment,  in  the  very  midst 
of  our  slaveholding  States,  of  an  independent  government,  for- 
bidding the  existence  of  slavery,  and  by  a  people  born,  for  the 
most  part,  among  us,  reared  in  our  habits,  and  speaking  our  lan- 
guage, could  not  fail  to  produce  the  most  unhappy  effects  upon 
both  parties.  If  Texas  were  in  that  condition,  her  territory  would 
afford  a  ready  refuge  for  the  fugitive  slaves  of  Louisiana  and 
Arkansas,  and  would  hold  out  to  them  an  encouragement  to  run 
away."  And  in  civil  diplomatic  phrase,  he  threatened  the  two- 
penny new  nation  with  war,  should  it  persist  in  the  purpose  to  have 
all  its  people  free.  "  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  a  people  con- 
scious of  the  power  to  protect  themselves  would  long  submit  to 
such  a  state  of  things.  They  would  assume  the  right  to  reclaim 
their  slaves  by  force,  and  for  that  purpose  would  invade  the  terri- 
tory of  Texas." 

It  was  in  vain  that  Lord  Aberdeen,  when  the  subject  was  pre- 
sented to  him  by  -Mr.  Everett,  disavowed  in  the  most  explicit  terms 
all  participation  by  the  British  government  in  any  such  transaction 
as  had  been  charged.  In  October,  Mr.  Upshur  formally  proposed 
to  Mr.  Van  Zandt,  the  Texan  Charge  at  Washington,  to  obtain 
powers  from  his  government  to  negotiate  a  treaty  of  annexation. 
The  Texan  people  meanwhile  had  bolted  a  little  from  the  track. 
They  were  irritated  by  the  rejection  of  their  former  proposals,  and, 
encouraged  by  the  long  supineness  of  Mexico,  they  had  begun  to 
think  they  might  do  as  well  to  set  up  for  themselves.  As  late  as 
January,  1844,  Mr.  Upshur  had  still  on  hand  the  work  of  suppli- 
cating and  bullying  them  into  a  consent  to  be  annexed. 

He  wheedled  them  hard,  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Murphy  of  the  16th 
of  that  month,  whining  to  them  of  the  "  sympathies  of  the  people 
of  this  country,"  by  whom,  at  the  time  of  the  rejection  of  the 
2 


!8  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

previous  proposal,  "  the  question  was  not  understood."  He 
threatened  them  harder ;  "  The  first  measure  of  the  new  emigrants, 
as  soon  as  they  shall  have  sufficient  strength,  will  be  to  destroy 
that  great  domestic  institution  upon  which  so  much  of  the  pros- 
perity of  our  country  depends.  *  *  *  *  If  Texas  should 
not  be  attached  to  the  United  States,  she  cannot  maintain  that  in- 
stitution ten  years,  and  probably  not  half  that  time.  You  will 
readily  perceive  that,  with  such  causes  as  these  at  work,  a  long 
continuance  of  peace  between  that  country  and  the  United  States 
is  absolutely  impossible.  War  is  inevitable."  [Yes,  we  freemen 
of  the  North  should  have  to  carry  on  a  war,  as  we  are  now  doing 
under  other  circumstances,  to  force  slavery  on  a  foreign  country], 
And  he  assured  them, —  with  what  degree  of  truth  the  event  of 
that  session  shows, —  "measures  have  been  taken  to  ascertain  the 
opinions  and  views  of  Senators  upon  the  subject,  and  it  is  found 
that  a  clear  constitutional  majority  of  two-thirds  are  in  favor  of  the 
measure." 

Under  such  appliances,  a  treaty  of  annexation  was  effected, 
and  was  ready  to  be  signed  at  the  time  of  the  disaster  of  the 
Princeton. 

Mr.  Calhoun  succeeded  to  the  Department  of  State  after  a  short 
interval,  and,  in  communicating  to  Mexico  the  purpose  of  Mr.  Tyler 
and  his  cabinet,  took  the  perfidious  ground  that  "  the  step  was 
forced  on  the  government  of  the  United  States,  in  self-defence,  in 
consequence  of  the  policy  adopted  by  Great  Britain  in  reference  to 
the  abolition  of  slavery  in  Texas  ;  "*  while  to  the  British  Envoy  he 
wrote,f  that  "  it  was  made  necessary  in  order  to  preserve  domestic 
institutions  placed  under  the  guaranty  of  the  respective  Constitu- 
tions of  the  two  countries  interested,  and  deemed  essential  to  their 
safety  and  prosperity."  This  is  the  Secretary,  who,  after  the 
sufficient  experience  the  country  had  had  of  him,  had  been  con- 
firmed in  his  place  by  a  unanimous  vote  of  the  Senate. 

President  Tyler,  in  his  impatience,  had  ordered  troops  to  the 
frontier  of  Texas,  and  a  naval  force  to  its  coast,  eleven  days  before 
the  treaty  was  submitted  to  the  Senate.  But  that  body  was  resting 
and  rejected  it,  after  weeks  of  vehement  debate,  on  the  8th  day 
of  June.  Patriotism,  justice,  and  humanity  drew  one  more  easy 
breath. 

*  Letter  of  April  19th,  1844,  to  Benjamin  E.  Green,  Chargfc. 
t  Letter  of  April  27th. 


TEXAS    ANNEXED.  19 

NO.  VII. 

FORTIFIED  WITH  A  QUARTER  PART  OF  MEXICO. 


THE  prohibition  in  the  Federal  Constitution  of  the  making  of  any 
treaty  without  the  consent  of  two-thirds  of  the  Senate,  was  a  wise, 
just,  and  necessary  provision  of  that  instrument,  for  the  protection 
of  minorities  of  the  States,  represented  as  States  in  that  body. 
Without  it  the  Constitution  could  never  have  been  adopted.  The 
States,  still  independent  communities,  would  never '  have  given  up 
such  a  power  over  their  foreign  relations  to  a  bare  majority  of  the 
States,  still  less  of  the  people,  of  the  confederation. 

At  the  close  of  the  session  of  1843-4,  the  scheme  for  the  an- 
nexation of  Texas  by  means  of  the  treaty-making  power  had  been 
signally  defeated.  Scarcely  any  one  yet  had  dreamed  that  it  would 
be  ever  revived  in  any  other  form.  Scarcely  had  it  entered  the 
wildest  imagination,  that  any  attempt  would  be  made  to  put  Massa- 
chusetts and  New  York  under  the  government  of  Texas,  by  a  pro- 
cess allowing  them  less  of  a  voice,  and  less  security,  than  they  en- 
joyed in  the  negotiation  of  an  arrangement  for  some  trumpery 
commercial  privilege. 

But  Mr.  Tyler,  and  Mr.  Calhoun,  and  the  usurpers  they  repre- 
sented, were  not  to  be  so  put  off.  In  the  interval  before  the  next 
meeting  of  Congress,  they  had  insisted  to  the  Texans  that  the 
measure  was  still  pending,  as  if  the  Senate  had  not  solemnly  put 
an  end  to  it  by  their  action  of  June  8th ;  they  had  kept  them  in 
heart  by  military  assistance,  without  any  authority  of  law ;  and  in 
his  message  at  the  opening  of  Congress  in  December,  1844,  the 
President  announced  that  the  question  "  has  been  submitted  to  the 
ordeal  of  public  sentiment.  A  controlling  majority  of  the  people, 
and  a  large  majority  of  the  States,  have  declared  in  favor  of  imme- 
diate annexation.  Instructions  have  thus  come  up  to  both  branches 
of  Congress,  from  their  respective  constituents,  in  terms  the  most 
emphatic.  It  is  the  will  of  both  the  people  and  the  States  that 
Texas  shall  be  annexed  to  the  Union  promptly  and  immediately." 
And  he  adds,  "The  two  governments  having  already  agreed  through 
their  respective  organs,  on  the  terms  of  annexation,  [' I  am  the 
State,'  for  the  Senate,  one  of  the  powers  necessary  to  any  agree- 
ment by  the  Constitution,  had  disagreed],  I  would  recommend  their 
adoption  by  Congress,  in  the  form  of  a  joint  Resolution  or  Act,  to 
be  perfected  and  made  binding  on  the  two  countries,  when  adopted, 
in  like  manner,  by  the  government  of  Texas." 

The  President's  declaration  of  the  will  of  the  people  respecting 
the  annexation  of  Texas  was  his  inference  from  the  result  of   the 
2* 


20  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

then  recent  Presidential  election.  The  democratic  convention, 
which,  a  week  before  the  rejection  of  the  treaty  by  the  Senate,  had 
nominated  Mr.  Polk,  had  at  the  same  time  adopted  some  dozen 
resolutions,  expressing  the  sense  of  its  members  on  as  many  matters 
of  public  policy.  One  of  them  was  as  follows  :  "  that  our  title  to 
the  whole  of  Oregon  is  clear  and  unquestionable ;  that  no  portion 
of  the  same  ought  to  be  ceded  to  England  or  any  other  power,  and 
thut  the  re-occupation  of  Oregon  and  the  re-annexation  of  Texas  at 
the  earliest  practicable  period,  are  great  American  measures,  which 
this  Convention  recommend  to  the  cordial  support  of  the  Democ- 
racy of  the  Union/'  Mr.  Polk  was  chosen  (having  sixteen  out  of 
twenty-six  States  in  his  favor),  and  the  question  of  annexation,  said 
Mr.  Tyler  and  his  Secretary,  was  thereby  decided  at  the  polls. 
Bank,  Tariff,  Internal  Improvements,  Sub-Treasury,  Native  Ameri- 
canism, Distribution  of  the  Public  Lands,  Oregon,  and  other  issues 
raised  in  the  Resolutions  of  the  nominating  Convention,  were  to  go 
for  nothing,  —  for  nothing,  the  electioneering  frauds  in  Louisiana, 
Pennsylvania  and  New  York,  —  for  nothing,  the  sixteen  thousand 
Liberty  Party  votes  in  the  latter  State,  which,  though  they  gave  Mr. 
Polk  the  election,  were  hardly  meant  to  be  for  annexation.  Texas, 
and  Texas  only,  had  been  in  the  people's  mind ;  their  votes  had  in- 
structed Congress  ;  and  annex  Texas  it  must,  bon  gre,  mal  gre  that 
Constitution,  which  the  President  and  Congress  were  sworn  to  sup- 
port. 

So  annex  they  did,  as  far  as  in  them  lay,  though  with  no  more 
constitutional  right  or  power  to  do  it,  than  any  other  two  hundred 
and  eighty  men  in  the  country,  who  should  get  together  some  fine 
morning,  and  pass  a  similar  vote  for  the  annexation  of  China  with 
the  Celestial  Emperor's  consent.  On  the  26th  of  January,  1845, 
after  three  or  four  weeks'  debate,  the  House  of  Representatives,  by 
a  vote  of  120  to  98,  resolved  on  its  part,  "  that  Congress  doth  con- 
sent that  the  Territory  properly  included  within,  and  rightfully  be- 
longing to,  the  Republic  of  Texas,  may  be  erected  into  a  new  State, 
to  be  called  the  State  of  Texas,  with  a  republican  form  of  govern- 
ment, to  be  adopted  by  the  people  of  said  Republic,  by  deputies  in 
Convention  assembled,  with  the  consent  of  the  existing  government, 
in  order  that  the  same  may  be  admitted  as  one  of  the  States  of  this 
Union." 

The  Senate  held  out  better,  and  for  five  weeks  of  sharp  anxiety 
there  was  hope  that  it  would  not  betray  its  great  trust.  At  length 
it  was  known  that  the  combined  forces  of  intrigue  and  corruption, 
party  management,  General  Jackson's  thunder,  and  executive  patron- 
age, had  secured  about  enough  votes  from  the  North  to  do  the  in- 
iquitous work  of  the  Slave  Power,  and  that  the  issue  hung  only  on 
the  will  of  a  Democratic  Senator  from  the  South,  whose  conscience, 
notwithstanding  the  biasses  of  his  position  and  his  party  creed,  re- 
fused as  yet  to  be  silenced.  A  wretched  artifice  obtained  the  vote 
of  the  recusant  Senator,  and  without  a  day's  delay  a  messenger  was 


ACTION  OF  FREE  STATES  ON  ANNEXATION.  21 

sped  to  Texas  to  invite  her  to  enter  the  breach  that  bad  men  had 
made  through  the  constitutional  defences  of  the  people  of  the  Uni- 
ted States. 

All  the  rest  the  usurpers  affected  to  regard  as  only  form,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  force  through  the  formal  measures  with  violent  and  inde- 
cent haste.  Congress  met,  in  1845,  on  the  first  day  of  December. 
On  the  10th,  immediately  on  the  appointment  of  the  committees, 
the  portion  of  the  President's  message  relating  to  the  admission  of 
Texas  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  the  Territories.  The  next 
day,  that  Committee  reported  to  the  House  a  Resolution,  "  that  the 
State  of  Texas  shall  be  one,  and  is  hereby  declared  to  be  one,  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  and  admitted  into  the  Union  on  an 
equal  footing  with  the  original  States,  in  all  respects  whatever."  It 
was  made  the  Order  of  the  Day  for  the  fifth  day  after,  at  which 
time  the  Previous  Question  was  immediately  called  for  and  sustain- 
ed, the  Constitution  of  the  new  State  having  been  placed  in  the 
members'  hands  only  the  day  before.  In  an  hour  and  forty  minutes 
the  thing  was  over  in  the  House,  the  insult  to  the  Constitution  being 
scarcely  aggravated  by  a  second  Resolution,  giving  to  Texas  two 
Representatives  till  the  census  of  1850,  without  any  thing  to  show 
that  its  population  is  as  great  as  that  of  Delaware,  which  has  but 
one.*  Of  all  days  in  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five,  the  final  act 
passed  the  Senate  on  the  22d  day  of  December,  while  at  Plymouth  ; 
they  were  celebrating  the  landing  of  the  pioneers  of  freedom  in  I 
this  Western  World.  Wonderful  was  it,  that  the  hundred  and  one  * 
glorious  ghosts  of  1620,  on  that  ninth  quarter-century  of  the  ripen- 
ing of  the  seed  they  sowed,  did  not  "  squeak  and  gibber"  in  the 
merry  hall,  to  the  drowning  of  speech  and  joke,  of  horn  and 
cymbal. 


NO.  VIII. 


OBJECTIONS  TO   ANNEXATION  IN  THE  FREE  STATES.— 
COUNTER-CURRENT  IN    MASSACHUSETTS. 

"The  measure  of  annexation  is  calculated  and  designedly  the  open  declarations 
of  its  friends,  to  uphold  the  interests  of  slavery,  extend  its  influence,  and  secure  its 
permanent  duration." 

THIS  is  quoted  from  Mr.  Calhoun.  The  declaration,  and  some 
of  its  bearings,  were  early  understood  in  some  of  the  free  States, 
and  they  took  their  measures  accordingly.  In  1838  some  of  the 
Legislatures  expressed  the  sense  of  their  constituents.  That  ot 
Rhode  Island  passed  Resolutions,  denying  the  competency  of  any 

*  In  the  autumn  of  1844,  at  the  election  of  President  in  Texas,  12,752  votes 
were  cast.  The  smallest  number  of  votes,  at  the  same  time,  in  any  Congressional 
District  in  Massachusetts,  was  10,120,  and  those  Districts  send  but  one  member. 
The  next  smallest  number  was  12,113. 


22  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

branch  of  the  government  to  effect  the  annexation,  or  that  it  could 
be  accomplished  "  without  the  formation  of  a  new  compact  of 
Union."  The  General  Assembly  of  Ohio  unanimously  declared, 
"  that  Congress  has  no  power  conferred  on  it  by  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  to  consent  to  such  annexation  ;  and  that  the  peo- 
ple of  Ohio  cannot  be  bound  by  any  such  covenant,  league,  or  ar- 
rangement, made  between  Congress  and  any  foreign  state  or  nation." 
The  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  resolved,  also  unanimously, 
"  We  do,  in  the  name  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  earnestly  and 
solemnly  protest  against  the  annexion  of  Texas  to  this  Union,  and 
declare  that  no  act  done,  or  compact  made,  for  such  purpose,  by 
the  government  of  the  United  States,  will  be  binding  on  the  States 
or  the  people." 

When  the  villany  was  started  again  in  1843,  and  till  its  consum- 
mation, the  protests  of  the  same  States  were  renewed,  with  con- 
tinued unanimity,  with  frequent  repetition,  and,  if  possible,  in  still 
more  emphatic  language.  No  party  within  their  borders  could  take 
the  opposite  ground  without  suicide.  Connecticut  and  New  Jersey 
added  their  wholesome  testimony.  New  Hampshire  and  Maine 
were  still  in  their  slavish  democratic  bonds.  Pennsylvania  is  brutish, 
and  did  nothing,  but  like  the  strong  ass  Issachar  crouched  down  be- 
neath her  burdens,  and  bowed  her  shoulder  to  bear,  and  became  a 
servant  unto  tribute.  New  York  did  nothing.  Poor  soulless  giant, 
her  honorable  history  is  yet  to  begin.  From  her  colonial  times, 
when,  patching  up  a  dastardly  truce,  she  helped  the  French  and  In- 
dians down  from  the  Berkshire  hills  against  the  shield  which  brave 
Massachusetts  held  over  the  New  England  settlements,  through  the 
time  of  her  traitors  of  the  Revolutionary  age,  down  to  the  time  of 
her  Butlers  and  her  Marcys,  her  Van  Burens  and  Hoyts,  poltroonery 
and  corruption  have  with  her  ruled  the  hour.  Nature  has  her  freaks, 
and  in  one  of  them  she  gave  a  great  man,  John  Jay,  to  New  York. 
Hamilton  was  a  waif  from  the  West  Indies  on  her  spirit-barren 
strand,  and  Rufus  King  from  Massachusetts.  No  doubt,  among  her 
millions,  she  has  many  wise  and  good,  but  the  day  when  they  begin 
to  impress  any  fit  influence  of  theirs  upon  her  counsels,  will  open  a 
new  chapter  in  the  annals  of  New  York. 

Massachusetts  was  the  back-bone  of  the  opposition.  Standing 
erect,  and  (as  it  seemed)  unenfeebled  by  division,  just  and  patriotic 
men  every  where  were  hoping  that  the  contagion  of  her  stern  ex- 
ample would  yet  save  the  land  from  bitter  shame.  While  the  Joint 
Resolutions  were  pending,  a  great  convention  of  her  citizens  met  in 
Faneuil  Hall,  to  utter  her  warning  in  yet  another  form.  The  call 
was  signed  by  men  of  all  parties, — the  men  accustomed  to  repre- 
sent, on  important  occasions,  the  intelligence,  the  property,  the 
patriotism,  and  weight  of  character  of  the  Commonwealth, — though 
already  was  remarked  an  absence  of  a  small  number  of  names,  to 
which  subsequent  developments  gave  a  significance.  A  vigorous 
Address,  worthy  of  the  place  of  deliberation,  and  of  the  old  times 


ACTION    OF    FREE     STATES    ON    ANNEXATION.  23 

it  had  kindred  with,  was  sent  forth  to  the  people  by  a  unani- 
mous assent.  Massachusetts  seemed  all  nerve  and  heart.  She  gave 
another  ringing  response  from  her  Legislative  halls.  It  was  more 
than  four  months  after  Mr.  Folk's  election,  and  four  weeks  after  the 
passage  of  the  Joint  Resolution  through  Congress,  that,  by  solemn 
Resolution,  with  only  twenty-seven  dissenting  voices,  in  her  legislature 
of  more  than  three  hundred  members,  she  repeated  her  "  refusal  to 
acknowledge  the  Act  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  au- 
thorizing the  admission  of  Texas,  as  a  legal  act." 

Through  all  its  stages,  the  measure  had  been  carried  with  a  high 
hand.  But  it  is  bad  generalship  to  rely  on  hard  knocks  alone.  Mr. 
Walker,  one  of  the  Coryphaei  of  the  scheme,  undertook  to  coax 
some  support  for  it  among  the  ill-affected  in  the  free  States.  In 
1844,  at  the  close  of  his  widely-circulated  letter  of  January  8th  [all 
mischief  now-a-days  shelters  itself  under  that  date],  after  showing 
to  the  slave  holders  how  annexation  would  increase  their  power, 
and  raise  the  value  of  their  property,  and  giving  to  various  other 
interests  their  portion  in  due  season,  he  turned  to  the  friends  of 
protection  for  domestic  industry  in  the  east,  and  told  them  with 
due  emphasis  of  italics  and  capitals,  "  Let  it  be  known,  and  pro- 
claimed as  a  certain  truth,  and  as  a  result  which  can  never  hereafter 
be  changed  or  recalled,  that,  upon  the  refusal  of  re-annexation,  now 
and  in  all  time  to  come,  THE  TARIFF,  AS  A  PRACTICAL  MEASURE, 
FALLS  WHOLLY  AND  FOR  EVER,  and  we  shall  thereafter  be  compelled 
to  resort  to  direct  taxes  to  support  the  government."  Be  not  in- 
credulous, gentle  reader.  This  is  the  self-same  Mr.  Robert  J. 
Walker,  now  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  whose  bill  for  the  repeal 
of  the  Tariff  passed  the  House  of  Representatives  on  the  third  day 
of  July  instant,  and  in  the  week  of  this  present  writing  will  be  car- 
ried through  the  Senate  by  those  two  Texan  votes,  which  he  was 
so  eloquent  with  the  cotton  manufacturers  to  give  him,  in  order  that 
the  Tariff  might  be  saved.  How  strange  that  the  wise  should  ever 
be  caught  in  their  own  craftiness ! 

What  effect  this  friendly  suggestion  had  in  winning  over  opposi- 
tion, is  not  to  be  known.  Motives  are  by  no  means  always  evident, 
even  to  the  party  moved.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that  Mr.  Walker 
did  not  reckon  altogether  without  his  host,  when  he  considered  that 
there  are  those  in  the  Whig  party,  with  whom  the  Tariff  is  the  car- 
dinal point  of  the  party  creed  ;  and,  if  any  expected  to  buy  the  for- 
bearance of  the  South  by  surrendering  every  high  principle  of  public 
action,  and  writing  themselves  recreant  to  what  had  made  them 
objects  of  confidence  as  public  men,  and  if,  after  all,  they  found 
themselves  deceived,  it  was  no  fault  of  Mr.  Walker's  that  they  mis- 
calculated and  were  disappointed  after  all  the  experience  of  the 
past.  And  certain  it  is,  at  all  events,  that,  in  the  summer  and  au- 
tumn of  1845,  an  unexpected  state  of  sentiment  was  manifested, 
even  in  some  high  quarters  in  Massachusetts.  The  people  of  the 
Commonwealth  felt  more  injured  and  more  determined.  The  lead- 
ers in  a  part  of  it  winced. 


24  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

For  the  first  time,  in  the  following  winter,  there  was  defection  in 
a  portion  of  the  Whig  party  in  the  General  Court.  Mr.A  Wilson, 
the  steadfast  and  true-hearted  member  from  Natick  in  the  House, 
introduced  a  Resolve  covering  more  ground  than  that  of  any  previ- 
ous legislative  action,  and  frankly  expressive  of  the  sense  of  the 
towns  of  Massachusetts,  respecting  the  sterner  attitude  which  the 
abuses  of  the  times  required.  It  passed  the  House  in  the  following 
words,  "That  Massachusetts  distinctly  and  solemnly  announces  to 
the  country  her  uncompromising  opposition  to  the  further  extension 
of  American  slavery  ;  that  she  hereby  deliberately  declares  her  ear- 
nest and  unalterable  purpose  to  use  every  lawful  and  Constitutional 
measure  for  its  overthrow  and  entire  extinction  ;  and  she  hereby 
pledges  her  cordial  co-operation  to  the  friends  of  civil  liberty 
throughout  the  Union,  in  every  just  and  practical  measure  that  shall 
tend  to  free  our  country  from  the  dominion,  curse  and  shame  of 
slavery,  and  make  her  great  and  glorious  among  the  nations." 

The  vote  for  the  Resolve  was  147  to  52.  There  was  about  the 
latter  number  of  Democrats  in  the  House. 

In  the  Senate,  the  addition  made  by  Mr.  President  Calhoun  to  the 
Joint  Committee  to  whom  the  Resolve  was  referred,  gave  it  into  hands 
which  might  have  been  expected  to  strangle  it.  Their  report,  not 
meeting  the  issue,  but  representing  that  the  resistance  of  Massa- 
chusetts had  already  been  sufficiently  protracted,  was  adverse  to  the 
Resolve.  The  report  was  accepted,  in  the  Senate,  by  a  vote  of  20 
to  16.  Of  the  Suffolk  Senators,  only  two  stood  for  the  Resolve. 
So  far  as  may  be  gathered  from  that  indication,  there  would  be 
some  plausibility  in  the  assertion  that  the  Resolve  does  not  express 
the  sense  of  Boston.  But  it  does  stand,  and  will  stand,  neverthe- 
less, as  the  sense  of  Massachusetts.  William  Pinckney  said,  nearly 
sixty  years  ago,  that  if  slavery  should  survive  fifty  years,  it  would 
work  a  "decay  of  the  spirit  of  liberty  in  the  Free  States."  But  he 
prophesied  too  gloomily.  The  capitals  may  cower  ;  but  the  interior 
will  be  true.  Massachusetts,  at  least,  has  done,  and  will  do,  her 
part  to  discredit  the  prediction. 


NO.  IX. 

CONSEQUENCES  OF   COTTONING  TO  IT  IN  THE  NORTH. 

A  RECENT  number  of  the  New  Orleans  "  Tropic  "contains  the 
following  remark ;  — 

"  After  Congress  had  been  in  session  some  time,  Mr.  Polk  ordered  the  army  to 
march  to  the  Rio  Grande.  *****  N0w  there  must  be  some  good  reason 
for  this  extraordinary  movement  on  his  part,  that  should  be  known  to  the  people. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Mr.  Polk  claimed  the  Muects  as  the  boundary  line 
between  Mexico  and  Texas  when  he  came  into  power,  and  on  the  banks  of  that  river 


NEW    BOUNDARY    OF    TEXAS.  25 

the  army  of  occupation  was  stayed  a  long  time.     Now  it  is  important  to  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States  for  Mr.  Polk  to  give  his  reasons  for  changing  his  mind." 

Certainly  the  advance  of  the  troops  from  the  Nueces  to  the  Rio 
Grande  was  rather  a  bold  step  on  Mr.  Folk's  part.  Helping  him- 
self to  Texas  with  any  boundaries  was  bad  enough.  But  the  coun- 
try between  those  rivers  had  nothing  to  do  with  Texas.  It  no  more 
belonged  to  that  province  than  did  the  capital  city  of  Mexico.  It 
lies  within  the  boundaries  (passing  from  North  to  South)  of  New 
Mexico,  Chihuahua,  Coahuila,  and  Tamaulipas.  So  every  delinea- 
tion, except  the  fraudulent  Congressional  map,  represents  it.  So  Mr. 
Polk's  own  party  friends  understood  it,  till  enlightened  by  the  suc- 
cess of  their  own  effrontery,  and  the  truckling  of  their  opponents. 
The  proposal  of  General  Jackson's  government,  said  Mr.  Benton,* 
"  extended  to  no  part  of  the  river,  or  even  of  the  valley,  of  the 
Rio  del  Norte.  Not  a  drop  of  the  water  of  that  river,  —  not  an 
inch  of  the  soil  of  its  valley,  —  did  he  propose  to  disrupt  from  its 
old  possessor,  and  to  incorporate  into  our  Union.  *****  They 
meditated  no  such  crime  or  folly  as  that  of  adding  the  left  bank  of 
the  Rio  del  Norte,  from  head  to  mouth,  to  our  Union."  "  The  trea- 
ty," he  said  again,  "  in  all  that  relates  to  the  boundary  of  the  Rio 
Grande,  is  an  act  of  unparalleled  outrage  on  Mexico." 

We  guess  we  may  be  able  to  throw  some  light  on  the  subject  of 
the  "  Tropic's"  curiosity.  Down  to  late  in  the  autumn  of  1845, 
the  feeling  of  the  masses  of  the  Free  States  seemed  to  be  growing 
constantly  more  intense  in  respect  to  the  tremendous  outrage  of  the 
Slave  Power,  that  was  in  progress.  Down  to  this  time,  Massachu- 
setts had  appeared  entirely  in  earnest,  and  the  greater  part  of  her 
New  England  sisters  had  ranged  themselves  by  her  side.  Even 
slave-ridden  New  Hampshire  was  picking  herself  up  from  the  mud, 
and  scraping  herself  clean  from  the  filth  of  her  ancient  alliance  ;  while 
Ohio,  the  hero  of  the  West,  was  going  on,  as  she  will  yet  go  on,  in 
a  way  worthy  of  her  clear  head  and  brave  heart.  Bold  and  arrogant 
as  the  usurpers  were,  it  was  still  prudent  to  keep  some  measures. 

While  things  stood  thus,  there  came  surprising  news  from  Boston 
to  Washington,  understood  to  betoken  that  "  the  head  "  of  opposi- 
tion "  was  sick,  and  the  heart  faint."  Mr.  Appleton,  and  some  of% 
his  friends  at  the  centre  of  New  England  influence,  had  given  in 
their  adhesion,  or  at  least  withdrawn  their  opposition,  and  discour- 
aged that  of  their  associates.  Mr.  Polk  has  a  man  in  his  cabinet 
from  New  England,  skilled  to  erect  broad  conclusions  on  a  narrow 
basis  of  facts,  and  he  had  now  some  materials  for  the  argument  that 
Massachusetts,  weakened  by  this  defection  in  her  old  strong  hold, 
was  going  to  show  the  white  feather.  The  news  of  the  new  move- 
ment reached  Washington  on  the  first  day  of  the  meeting  of  Con- 
gress. Nothing  material  was  done,  of  a  nature  to  bring  that  infer- 
ence into  question,  by  any  delegate  from  the  North  in  either  House. 

*  Speech  in  Secret  Session,  May  20th,  1844. 


26  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

The  game  of  opposition,  hoped  the  slave  usurpers,  is  up.  If  the 
free  States  are  so  content  with  what  has  already  come  and  gone, 
and  so  easy  about  what  is  threatened  to  come  next,  they  may  be 
reckoned  on  to  put  up  with  any  thing  that  can  come.  A  little  more 
or  a  little  less,  will  not  fret  them.  Accordingly,  as  soon  as  the  mat- 
ter could  be  properly  thought  over,  viz  :  on  the  13th  day  of  January, 
orders  were  issued  to  General  Taylor  to  push  on  to  the  Rio  Grande, 
where  he  established  his  batteries  on  the  left  bank,  commanding  the 
Mexican  town  on  the  other  side.  And  so  opened  our  Polka  war- 
dance,  to  the  tune  of  half  a  million  of  dollars  a  day.  It  exists,  so 
the  Congressmen  voted,  "  by  the  act  of  Mexico."  Certainly.  Of 
course.  History  will  make  no  question  of  that,  nor  of  the  scrupu- 
losity of  the  voters. 

The  demonstration  of  Mr.  Appleton  and  his  friends,  whenever 
and  however  else  it  might  have  been  made,  was  simultaneous  with, 
and  was  apparently  occasioned  by,  a  vigorous  movement  of  the 
people,  which,  without  doubt,  it  did  much  to  embarrass  and  check, 
coming,  as  it  did,  as  unexpectedly  as  a  thunder-clap  in  a  clear  sky. 
In  November,  1845,  before  the  Texan  Constitution  had  been  pre- 
sented for  the  examination  of  Congress,  and  while,  of  course,  by  the 
very  provisions  of  the  Act  of  the  previous  session,  the  question  was 
still  pending,  the  Massachusetts  State  Texas  Committee  undertook 
to  procure  an  expression  of  the  freemen  of  the  country,  with  a  view 
to  arrest  the  measure.  They  applied  for  aid  to  Mr.  Appleton  among 
others  whose  previous  course  had  appeared  to  mark  them  as  friendly 
to  the  object.  In  a  letter,  in  which  he  declined  to  give  it,  he  said, 
"  For  all  practical  purposes,  as  far  as  the  people  are  concerned,  I 
consider  the  question  as  settled.  *****  Massachusetts  has  done 
her  duty,  and  her  Senators  and  Representatives  will  continue  to  do 
theirs.  Beyond  that,  I  cannot  think  it  good  policy  to  waste  our 
efforts  upon  the  impossible." 

How  was  the  "question  settled?"  Why  was  the  defeat  of  the 
measure  "  impossible,"  if  its  honest  enemies  had  even  then  reso- 
lutely combined  ?  In  the  erection  of  Missouri  into  a  State,  the  bat- 
tle had  been  bravely  fought  to  the  bat's  end,  and  it  was  only  then 
by  a  majority  of  six  in  the  House,  that  the  cause  of  slavery  tri- 
umphed. The  Texas  measure  fell  to  the  ground,  after  all  that  had 
taken  place,  if,  in  tiie  House  of  Representatives  then  about  to  meet, 
a  majority  could  have  been  found  against  it.  In  that  House,  there 
were  to  be  only  88  members  from  the  Slave  States,  against  135  from 
the  Free,  so  that  unless  24  members  from  the  Free  States  should 
prove  faithless  to  the  cause  of  freedom,  Texas  would  not  be  annex- 
ed, with  a  Constitution  recognising  slavery,  which  was  all  the  peti- 
tioners at  this  time  objected  to.  Was  there  no  hope  of  preventing 
that  number  from  going  over,  by  a  strenuous  remonstrance  on  .the 
part  of  their  free  constituents  ?  Are  there  no  timid  party-men,  who, 
drilled  and  welded  to  the  wrong  as  they  may  be,  would  yet  like  to 
be  emboldened  to  the  right  by  voices  from  their  homes?  Are  there 


THE    TEXAS    QUESTION    SETTLED.  27 

no  party-men,  who,  however  devoted  to  the  wrong,  have  a  whole- 
some fear  of  those  on  whose  votes  they  must  rely  for  the  next  elec- 
tion ?  Late  as  was  the  effort,  and  grievous  and  noxious  as  was  the 
opposition  which  it  encountered  in  the  house  of  its  friends,  no  fewer 
than  some  sixty  thousand  remonstrants  sent  up  their  names  from 
Massachusetts,  and  probably  not  far  from  forty  thousand  more  from 
other  States.  If  the  proportion  of  remonstrants  to  voters  had  been 
the  same  in  the  other  free  States  as  in  this,  the  aggregate  number 
of  the  former  would  have  been  no  less  than  880,000.  Would  that 
number,  or  even  the  half  of  it,  have  produced  no  effect  ?  And  what 
tended  more  to  prevent  it  than  the  bolting  at  the  centre  of  opera- 
tions? 

The  question  was  "  settled."  Have  Mr.  Appleton  and  his  friends 
always  reasoned  thus?  It  was  no  more  expressly  doomed  by  the 
Baltimore  Resolutions,  nor  determined  by  the  issue  of  the  Presiden- 
tial election,  than  was  the  repeal  of  the  Tariff  Bill.  Yet  did  Mr. 
Appleton  and  his  friends  acquiesce  in  that  settlement?  Or  did 
they  desist  from  their  resistance  till  the  bill  was  repealed  this  week  ? 

The  question  was  "  settled."  Did  the  very  signs  of  the  times,  to 
an  observant  eye,  hold  out  not  the  remotest  hope  of  unsettling  it  ? 
Was  there  no  bargain  pending  about  Oregon  and  Texas,  the  breach 
of  which  has  since  shivered  the  democratic  party  ?  And  was  there 
no  probability  whatever  that  the  rogues  might  fall  out  in  that  quar- 
rel, in  time  for  honest  men  to  have  another  chance  for  their  rights, 
if  they  would  only  continue  to  look  after  them  ? 

The  question  was  "  settled."  What  if  it  had  been  ?  Did  Mas- 
sachusetts owe  nothing  then  to  her  principles,  her  pledges,  her  char- 
acter ?  Did  she  owe  no  record  of  honorable  action  to  future  his- 
tory ?  Have  Mr.  Appleton  and  his  friends  always  reasoned  thus  ? 
The  question  of  the  Presidential  election  we  in  Massachusetts  knew 
to  be  "settled"  on  Thursday  nigfit,  the  7th  of  November,  1844. 
Yet  on  Monday  the  llth,  under  the  cheer  of  these  same  leaders,  we 
went  to  the  polls,  and  rolled  up  a  plurality  of  fourteen  thousand  for 
the  defeated  candidate.  Our  notion  then  was,  and  the  truth  was 
and  forever  is,  that  the  more  adverse  the  times,  the  more  honorable 
is  stedfastness  to  principle  and  profession. 

But  Mr.  Appleton  and  his  friends  in  Boston  said  that  the  question 
was  settled,  and  the  House  of  Representatives,  at  Washington,  took 
them  at  their  word.  Without  such  encouragement  to  believe  that 
the  spirit  of  Liberty  was  "  settled  "  in  the  Free  States,  they  would 
scarcely  have  ventured  to  force  the  measure  through  the  last  stage, 
with  such  insulting  and  outrageous  haste  as  characterised  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  16th  day  of  December. 


28  THE     SLAVE     POWER. 


NO.  X. 

WHAT  HAS  THE  NORTH  TO  DO  WITH  IT?— THE   NORTH  IS 
A  FRACTION   OF  THE  HUMAN   RACE. 

"  I  AM  a  man,"  said  the  classical  poet,  "  and  to  nothing  which 
concerns  men  am  I  indifferent."  He  was  a  slave,  though  one  of 
the  great  writers  of  Rome.  But  he  put  the  sentiment  into  the  mouth 
of  a  freeman  ;  and  every  where,  and  in  all  ages,  the  free  heart  of 
man  has  an  echo  for  it. 

"  I  am  an  American,"  may  we  add,  "  and  there  is  nothing  which 
Cbncerns  the  character  and  honor  of  my  country,  that  does  not  in- 
terest me." 

Massachusetts  has  concerned  herself  to  good  purpose  about  all  the 
great  troubles  that  afflict  mankind.  She  began  the  Temperance  re- 
formation, and  has  sent  its  beneficent  influence  to  the  borders  of  the 
civilized  world.  She  instituted  Peace  Societies,  and  has  leavened 
the  whole  mass  of  Christian  thought  and  sentiment  on  that  momen- 
tous subject.  She  established  the  first  American  mission  to  the  hea- 
then ;  and  of  the  missionaries  who  have  gone  from  this  continent, 
one  quarter  part  have  been  her  sons  and  daughters,  while  the  propor- 
tion of  money  contributed  by  her  for  the  same  purpose,  as  compared 
with  that  from  the  whole  country,  has  not  been  less. 

Domestic^  slavery  includes  all  forms  of  cruelty  and  wrong.  Never, 
nowhere,  in  the  most  barbarous  countries  and  ages,  has  it  existed  in 
a  more  horrid  form  than  in  these  United  States.  Men  scourged  and 
branded,  —  women  scourged,  branded,  and  prostituted,  —  the  sweet 
charities  of  domestic  life  denied,  —  husbands  parted  from  wives,  chil- 
dren from  parents,  under  the  hammer  and  the  whip,  —  human  re- 
duced to  mere  brute  life,  and  made  as  much  more  wretched  as  fear, 
despair,  and  outraged  human  feelings  can  make  it,  —  these  and  all 
the  untold  distresses  that  belong  to  them,  are  the  matters  with  which 
the  North,  made  up  of  men  and  women  with  human  hearts, 
has  no  concern  whatever.  The  North  had  some  concern,  as  usual, 
twenty-five  years  ago,  when  Grecian  slavery  sent  its  arousing  appeal 
across  the  ocean.  But  we  have  no  details  of  Turkish  savageness, 
to  show  that  it  would  stand  any  comparison  with  ours. 

Our  friends  who  go  on  visits  from  the  North,  are  subject  to  some 
error  on  this  subject.  Their  introductions  bring  them  acquainted 
with  the  most  cultivated  part  of  the  Southern  community.  What- 
ever may  present  itself  to  give  them  pain,  they  see  its  slavery  only 
in  its  least  revolting  shape.  On  the  large  and  carefully  ordered  plan* 
tation  of  a  proprietor  of  wealth  and  refinement,  its  hardships  are 
mitigated,  besides  being  kept* out  of  view,  though  much  of  its  hard- 
ship will  there  depend  on  the  temper  of  the  master,  and  more  on 
that  of  his  underlings.  But  it  is  only  a  very  small  part  of  the  ag- 


MISERIES    OF     SLAVERY.  29 

gregate  of  slaves,  that  comes  even  thus  far  under  the  observation  of 
strangers.  Supposing  ten  to  be  the  average  number  held  by  each 
proprietor,  which  cannot  be  far  from  a  correct  estimate,  it  follows,  — 
and  such  is  the  fact,  —  that,  while  a  considerable  portion  are  attached 
to  large  estates,  another  considerable  portion,  by  one,  two,  and 
three,  and  so  on,  in  a  family,  are  in  the  power  of  persons  of  infe- 
rior condition,  little  better  instructed  or  less  brutal  than  themselves, 
and  not  like  the  independent  laborer  in  moderate  circumstances  at 
the  North,  frugal,  industrious,  orderly,  self-respecting  and  self- 
controlled,  but  persons  living  in  such  idleness  and  gross  indulgen- 
ces as  the  forced  labor  at  their  command  may  admit,  and  without 
mental  training  or  delicacy  to  restrain  the  capricious  abuse  of  their 
despotic  authority. 

It  is  impossible  to  reflect  too  sorrowfully  on  the  condition  of  man, 
woman  or  child,  in  the  keeping  of  rude  ruffians  like  these.  But  cul- 
tivation of  mind,  and  refinement  of  manners,  are  no  pledge  even  for 
that  moderation  of  character,  which,  after  all,  in  its  fullest  exercise, 
could  only  abate  a  small  part  of  the  essential  evils  of  the  institution. 
Lord  Byron  said  that  Ali  Pasha  was  the  mildest  mannered  person  he 
ever  saw.  The  condition  of  slavery  subjects  one  man  to  the  unre- 
stricted power  of  another,  for  every  thing  short  of  life  and  death  ; 
and  this  is  a  power  which  cannot  fail  to  be  enormously  abused, 
on  the  whole,  as  long  as  man  is  man. 

It  is  mere  impertinence  to  say  that  slaves  will  be  well  treated,  be- 
cause such  treatment  is  for  the  master's  interest.  What  man,  es- 
pecially what  man  whose  will  is  law,  takes  counsel  uniformly  of  his 
interest?  Masters  are  not  made  up  of  mere  prudence  and  consid- 
eration. They  are  liable,  like  other  people,  to  be  also  whimsical, 
passionate,  and  violent,  and  their  arbitrary  power  inflames  these 
humors.  Providence,  in  committing  children  so  fully  to  the  care  of 
parents,  has  protected  them  through  the  parental  affection,  one  of 
the  deepest  instincts  of  our  nature,  which,  however,  is  often  seen 
to  be  a  scarcely  adequate  security  against  unkindness  and  wrong. 
Where  is  the  protection  against  the  irritated  master,  or  against  his 
brutal  overseer,  for  the  indolent,  wasteful,  stupid,  and  provoking 
slave  ;  indolent  and  wasteful,  because  without  any  better  excite- 
ment than  fear ;  stupid,  because  forbidden  to  learn  ?  Nor  is  it  by 
any  means  the  settled  maxim  at  the  South  that  it  has  been  often 
supposed  to  be.  that  a  kind  treatment  of  slaves  is  for  the  master's 
interest.  The  story  is  commonly  told  in  Louisiana  of  one  who,  not 
long  ago,  was  perhaps  the  largest  proprietor  in  the  State,  that  he 
expressly  maintained  the  opposite  doctrine,  that  it  was  cheaper  to 
buy  than  to  keep  or  rear,  and  that  he  worked  his  slaves  accordingly, 
renewing  his  supply  by  purchase  every  few  years. 

Any  particular  array  of  facts  is  superfluous,  at  the  same  time  that 
it  must  be  altogether  imperfect,  while  the  unavoidable  tendencies  of 
such  a  state  of  things  stare  us  so  fully  in  the  face.  But  one  can 
hardly  keep  getting  enough  of  them  for  his  satisfaction,  if  he  has 


30  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

occasion  to  pass  through  our  Southern  country.  Let  him  travel  in 
the  public  conveyances,  in  Georgia  and  Alabama,  and  day  by  day 
(we  speak  from  knowledge)  he  shall  be  forced  to  see  the  most 
wicked  outrages  inflicted  on  those  defenceless  people.  Let  him 
take  the  stage  coaches  through  Virginia,  he  shall  hear,  hour  after 
hour,  stories  told  by  the  neighbors  of  the  parties,  showing  the  de- 
plorable degradation  of  morals  created  by  this  baleful  institution. 

They  say  that  whipping,  branding,  and  other  tortures,  manacling 
and  coHaring  with  iron,  hunting  runaways  with  dogs,  the  separation 
of  families  by  sale,  the  prohibition  of  that  knowledge  which  makes 
a  man  different  from  a  beast,  are  necessary  to  the  existence  of  forced 
servitude.  That  is  what  we  say  too.  And  further  we  say,  that 
because  such  wrongs  are  necessary  to  it,  the  institution  is  too  bad  to 
exist.* 

We  of  New  England  are  not  alone  in  saying  so.  The  whole 
world,  civilized  and  savage,  is  coming  to  a  remarkable  unanimity 
upon  the  subject.  Not  only  England  has  abolished  it.  The  half- 
civilized  Mexican,  the  barbarous  African,  the  Bey  of  Tunis,  have 
abolished  it,  as  too  cruel  a  thing  to  be  longer  allowed  by  any  who 
have  drank  the  milk  of  woman.  The  King  of  Dahomey,  the  last 
accounts  from  Guinea  say,  is  taking  steps  for  its  abolition.  The 
King  of  Dahomey  is  putting  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Governor  Hammond 
to  shame. 

A  profound  sentiment  of  disgust  and  indignation  pervades  the  civ- 
ilized world.  There  are  circles  abroad,  —  not  circles  of  rank,  but 
of  intelligence,  refinement,  and  worth,  —  into  which  a  man  can 
have  no  admission,  when  it  is  once  known  that  he  is  an  American, 
till  it  is  further  known  that  he  is  not  a  slaveholder.  Soon  an  Amer- 

*  Mr.  Walker,  in  his  "Letter  relative  to  the  Annexation  of  Texas,"  by  way 
of  showing  the  superior  advantages  of  slavery,  and  the  inhumanity  of  a  free  con- 
dition for  the  blacks,  stated  (p.  12)  that  of  blacks  in  the  non-slaveholding  States, 
one  in  96  was  either  deaf  and  dumb,  blind,  an  idiot,  or  insane  !  For  the  basis  of 
this  precious  argument,  he  referred  to  "  the  official  returns  of  the  census  of  1840," 
made  probably  by  some  poor  creatures  who  were  paid  their  electioneering  wages 
by  being  employed  in  this  business.  How  fit  they  were  for  it,  at  any  rate,  or  how 
well  they  understood  what  would  please  their  employers,  may  be  inferred  from  the 
following  specimens  of  their  report,  among  a  vast  number  of  others  not  at  all  less 
remarkable  : 

COLORED  INHABITANTS  IN  TOWNS  OF  MASSACHUSETTS. 

Total.  Insane.  Total.         Insane. 

Freetown  0  2  I  Sterling  0  2 

Plympton  2  4  |  Danvers  0  2 

Leominster  0  2     Georgetown  1  2 

Wilmington  0  2  |  Worcester  151  133 

While  in  Maine,  by  the  same  ciphering,  it  turned  out  that  every  fourteenth  negro 
was  afflicted  with  mental  aberration. 

What  was  worse,  Mr.  Secretary  Calhonn  must  needs  make  the  same  use  of  these 
stupid  falsehoods,  and  publish  them,  and  his  arguments  founded  on  them,  to  the 
laughing  world,  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Pakenham  of  April  18th,  1844  ;  and  when  the 
House  of  Representatives,  on  Mr.  Adams's  motion,  called  his  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject, he  replied  that  he  was  "  not  aware  of  any  errors  in  the  census." 


REPEAL    OF    THE     TARIFF.  31 

ican  slave-holding  envoy  will  find  his  position  uncomfortable  in 
Europe.  The  Church  of  Scotland  will  SEND  BACK  THE  MONEY, 
contributed  by  American  slaveholders  to  its  necessities.  The  great 
ecclesiastical  bodies  among  us  can  keep  up  no  cohesion,  with  this 
dividing  element ;  one  after  another,  within  the  last  two  years,  they 
have  been  sundering,  by  force  of  the  moral  antagonism  within  their 
vitals.  The  political  organizations  feel  it.  Mr.  Berrien  of  Georgia 
is  said  to  be  a  gentleman  of  estimable  qualities  ;  but  who  does  not 
know  that  his  participation  in  our  electioneering  canvass  of  1844 
was  strongly  distasteful  to  many  of  our  patriotic  yeomen,  and  that 
where  his  Whig  argument  persuaded  one  voter,  his  slavery  presence 
sometimes  disturbed  and  discouraged  two  ?  And  this  before  any 
body  could  have  foreboded  that  he  would  have  been  one  of  the 
majority  of  the  Committee,  which  carried  the  final  measure  for  the 
annexation  of  Texas  through  the  Senate. 

What  has  the  North  to  do  with  Slavery  1  Just  as  much  as  hu- 
manity has,  and  that  is  a  great  deal ;  just  as  much  as  the  decent 
reputation  of  the  country  has ;  and  just  as  much  as  the  South  itself 
has,  in  respect  to  part  of  the  jurisdiction  of  these  United  States. 
The  Territories,  which  we  of  the  North,  as  much  as  any  body,  have 
the  responsibility  of  governing,  have  borne  the  stain  as  broadly  and 
as  deeply  as  any  portion  of  the  land.  The  District  of  Columbia, 
for  which  we  are  legislators,  is  the  great  slave-market  of  the  Union  ; 
and  Northern  Members  of  Congress,  present  there  on  the  public 
service,  must  day  by  day  be  witnesses  to  enormities,  which  they,  or 
at  all  events  their  constituents,  execrate  from  the  bottom  of  their 
hearts.  Have  they  nothing  to  do  with  that?  Will  mankind,  will 
just  history,  will  Christianity,  will  a  righteous  God,  admit  any  such 
plea? 


NO.  XL 

WHAT  HAS  THE  NORTH  TO  DO  WITH  IT?  — BUSINESS  OF 
THE  NORTH  SACRIFICED. 

THE  mail  of  Wednesday  week  put  us  in  the  way  of  one  answer 
to  this  question.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  do  any  thing  to  prevent 
the  annexation  of  Texas,  said  some  of  our  politicians,  towards  the 
close  of  1845.  About  the  middle  of  1846,  two  Texan  votes  in 
the  United  States  Senate  strip  thousands  of  freemen  in  the  North 
of  their  means  of  an  honest  livelihood.  Foisted  in  among  us  by 
the  Southern  usurpers,  a  petty  foreign  province,  without  the 
slightest  Constitutional  right  to  interfere  in  our  affairs,  has  struck 
a  staggering  blow  at  the  industry  of  the  workshops  of  Massachu- 
setts. 


32  THE     SLAVE    POWER. 

The  Slave  Power  will  not  endure  that  Northern  freemen  should 
prosper.  Slave  labor  and  free  labor  it  regards  as  antagonistic 
interests.  Down  to  1816,  the  South  waged  war  on  commerce, 
then  our  only  way  to  wealth.  To  raise  the  price  of  their  cotton, 
they  determined  that  we  should  manufacture  or  starve.  We  did 
not  incline  to  starve,  and  we  learned  to  manufacture.  The  sight 
of  our  new  prosperity  annoys  them  as  much  as  the  sight  of  the 
old.  They  will  not  understand  that  it  is  because  we  work,  with 
the  spirit  and  intelligence  of  freemen  (which  they  will  not  do), 
that  we  flourish,  and  they  are  out  at  the  elbows. 

"  Base  envy  withers  at  another's  joy 
And  hates  that  excellence  it  cannot  reach." 

So  after  many  a  struggle,  defeated  by  what  survived  of  the  good 
sense  and  patriotic  feeling  of  the  country,  they  have  succeeded  at 
length,  with  the  aid  of  their  new  allies,  in  striking  down  a  system 
coeval  with  the  existence  of  the  government,  but  more  essential 
now,  as  they  persuade  themselves,  to  our  well-being  than  to  their 
own.  The  Slave-Power  has  done  it.  Who  does  not  know  that  ? 
Has  the  wronged  and  cheated  North  nothing  to  do  with  the  Slave 
Power  ? 

By  the  disposition  it  has  manifested  to  truckle  to  that  power  in 
order  to  secure  its  indulgence  and  patronage,  the  North  has  been 
rather  too  apt  to  show  its  consciousness  of  having  something  to  do 
with  it,  as  an  element  of  our  politics.  If  it  is  ever  to  learn  better, 
it  might  seem  that  it  now  has  its  lesson.  Acquiescence  in  the 
unutterable  atrocity  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  did  not  save  the 
Tariff.  Texas  has  stricken  the  Tariff  down.  The  retributive  jus- 
tice that  never  spares  public  delinquency,  has  executed  speedily  its 
judgment  against  an  evil  work. 

Mr.  Davis  is  reported  to  have  said,  the  other  day,  in  the  Senate, 
that  the  Tariff  system  "  had  occupied  the  attention  of  the  people  of 
this  country  for  more  than  twenty  years.  *  *  *  It  had  in  fact 
been  the  great  political  question  of  all  that  period."  It  is  a  great 
question,  without  doubt,  particularly  in  its  moral  aspects.  A  man 
reasonably  expects  of  the  government  which  he  supports,  that  it 
shall  allow  him  a  fair  chance  to  obtain  by  his  industry  the  means  of 
a  decent  living,  and  of  an  education  for  his  children  ;  and,  to  be 
prosperous  in  a  higher  sense  than  has  any  thing  to  do  with  pam- 
pering or  finery,  a  community  needs  to  have  a  competent  provision 
for  its  members.  But  Scripture  is  wiser  than  trade,  when  it  de- 
clares that  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abudance  of  the  things 
which  he  possesseth.  He  may  buy  that  abundance  so  dear,  that  it 
shall  visit  him  with  the  most  wretched  of  all  poverty.  To  some 
people  it  may  seem  preaching  to  say  so  ;  but  there  is,  after  all,  a 
greater  question  than  that  of  the  Tariff,  which  the  free  people  of 
this  country  have  in  hand,  and  which  the  Whig  party,  that  pro- 
fesses to  wish  them  well,  ought  to  have  vigorously  in  hand  ;  and 


TEXAS    AND    THE    TARIFF.  33 

that  is,  the  question  of  LIBERTY  and  RIGHT.  The  Tariff  Bill  of 
1842  had  its  merits  ;  but,  strange  though  it  may  sound  in  some 
ears,  the  Preamble  to  the  American  Constitution  contains  far  more 
important  meaning  in  less  space. 

Mr.  Appleton  did  not  think  it  worth  while  last  autumn  to  make 
an  effort  for  freedom  against  Texas.  He  said  the  question  of  an- 
nexation was  "  settled,"  and  the  administration  concluded,  on  his 
showing,  that  the  spirit  of  liberty  was  disposed  of  too  in  the  Free 
States.  It  is  true  he  thought  the  Tariff  question  was  also  settled. 
In  his  communication  to  the  "  National  Intelligencer/'  reprinted 
here  last  winter  in  a  pamphlet,  he  said,  "  This  is  the  cry  which  is 
expected  to  break  down  the  tariff,  and  there  is  little  doubt  it  will 
succeed ;  for  the  party  have  set  up  the  cry,  and  they  have  decided 
majorities  in  both  branches  of  Congress.''  (p.  21).  But,  hopeless 
as  opposition  was  in  Mr.  Appleton's  opinion,  still,  in  the  momentous 
matter  of  the  tariff,  he  thought  it  expedient  to  persevere  to  the  end, 
for  he  is  wise  man  enough  to  know  that  exertion  is  always  manly 
and  prudent,  even  when  the  chances  of  success  are  small.  Why 
this  difference  in  the  two  cases  ?  Was  it  that  in  the  one  case  the 
desire  to  succeed  was  great,  and  in  the  other  it  was  little  or  none  ? 

According  to  the  interpretation  of  Mr.  Appleton  and  some  of  his 
friends,  not  only  does  the  Whig  creed  seem  to  be  synonymous  with 
the  late  Tariff  system,  but  the  Tariff  seems  to  mean  nothing  but 
protection  for  the  cotton  manufacture.  Now,  in  Massachusetts, 
Tariff  ought  to  mean  something  besides  cotton.  Of  the  manufac- 
tured products  of  that  State,  cotton  (calico  included)  does  not 
equal  one-sixth  part.  It  is  not  even  the  principal  article.  Leather 
(including  boots  and  shoes)  exceeds  it  by  nearly  two  millions  of 
dollars.  And  if  the  cotton  manufacture,  conducted  by  rich  corpo- 
rations, has  given  the  principal  occasion  to  that  clamor  of  dema- 
gogues against  capitalists,  by  which  the  other  forms  of  manufacture, 
neither  conducted  by  corporations  nor  owned  by  capitalists,  have 
been  made  to  suffer,  it  is  doubly  hard  if  any  hazardous  experiment 
to  purchase  an  exclusive  security  or  advantage  for  the  former, 
should  be  found  to  result  in  a  sacrifice  not  only  of  itself,  but  of  all 
the  rest. 

Manufacturers  of  Massachusetts,  look  at  Mr.  Appleton's  pam- 
phlet, entitled  "  What  is  a  Revenue  Standard  ? "  circulated  here 
last  spring,  and  see  how  many  interests  of  yours  were  thought 
worthy  of  consideration,  in  a  discussion  of  the  Tariff.  With  the 
exception  of  a  paragraph  on  woolens,  and  a  line  or  two  on  straw 
hats,  and  a  few  more  on  silk  (a  very  unimportant  article),  all  the 
rest  of  the  argument,  as  far  as  Massachusetts  is  concerned,  relates 
to  cotton.  What  do  the  48,000  shoemakers  and  tanners  of  Massa- 
chusetts say  to  this  ? 

u  Ho  !  workers  of  the  old  time  styled 
'The  gentle  ciaft  of  Leather,'  " 


34  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

are  the  eighteen  millions  which  you  produce  out  of  the  hundred 
millions  of  annual  manufacturing  product  of  the  Commonwealth,  of 
no  account  in  connexion  with  protection  for  native  industry? 
Papermakers,  hatters,  glass-blowers,  men  of  all  the  other  crafts, 
which  in  the  aggregate  exceed  six  fold  the  production  of  cotton,  is 
the  Tariff  nothing  to  you  ?  If  slavery  had  not  been  established  in 
Texas  by  its  admission  to  this  Union,  you  would  have  had  a  large 
market  for  your  wares  among  the  freemen  who  would  then  soon  have 
occupied  that  inviting  country.*  Above  all,  if  Texas  had  not  been 
admitted,  the  Tariff  which  protected  your  domestic  market  would  not 
have  been  repealed,  as  it  was.  With  the  admission  of  Texas,  and 
its  consequent  perpetual  slavery,  the  cotton  manufacturers  may  get 
their  raw  material  a  fraction  of  a  cent  lower  on  the  pound,  and 
thejr  may  find  a  sale  for  a  few  more  cheap  negro  cloths.  But  how 
much  of  your  paper  will  the  slaves  use  in  writing  to  their  friends  ? 
How  many  cases  of  your  hats  will  they  order  in  a  year  ?  How 
much  of  your  glass  will  the  luxury  of  their  tables  and  their  draw- 
ing-rooms require  ?  How  many  of  your  spermaceti  candles  will  they 
need  to  light  their  halls,  how  much  of  your  cabinet  ware  to  furnish 
their  chambers  ?  If  the  admission  of  Texas  was  expected  to  bene- 
fit the  cotton  trade,  how  much  gratitude  do  you  owe  to  the  disin- 
terestedness of  those  who  have  been  willing  to  have  your  business 
broken  up  by  Texan  votes  ?  If  a  willingness  to  admit  Texas  was 
expected  to  be  a  means  of  conciliating  the  Southern  despots,  so 
that  they  would  consent  to  let  the  Tariff  stand,  how  much  respect 
do  you  owe  to  the  sagacity  of  such  calculators  ? 

A  man  in  Mr.  Appleton's  position  is  not  favorably  circumstanced 
in  respect  to  comprehensive  and  elevated  views  of  public  policy. 
He  may  be  skilled  in  finance,  —  in  questions  of  currency,  exchange 
and  customs, —  but  his  habits  of  thought  at  best  lead  him  to  con- 
cern himself  with  the  obvious  and  superficial  causes  of  material 
prosperity,  to  the  neglect  or  obstruction  of  those  which  are  more 
efficient  and  vital.  He  pries  knowingly  among  the  wheels  and 
spindles,  but  does  not  care  so  much  for  the  source  of  the  stream 
that  sets  them  going.  There  is  a  thousand  fold  more  wise,  and 
manly,  and  profitable  statesmanship  in  George  Putnam's  Election 
Sermon,  wherein  he  showed  how  righteousness  exalteth  a  nation, 
and  how  Massachusetts  had  been  prosperous  because  she  had  been 
religious  and  brave,  than  in  all  that  Mr.  Appleton  ever  said  or  wrote 
put  together.  il  Whenever,"  said  that  sensible  preacher,  "  she 
shall  come  down  from  her  high  Christian  estate,  and  disown  her 
baptismal  vows,  then,  —  look  at  her  history.,  look  at  her  position, 
and  acknowledge  it,  —  then  her  prosperity  will  become  disease,  her 

*  "  The  first  measure  of  the  new  emigrants,  as  soon  as  they  shall  have  sufficient 
strength,  will  be  to  abolish  that  great  domestic  institution,  upon  which  so  much  of 
the  prosperity  of  our  Southern  country  depends.  *  *  *  *  .  *  If  Texas  should 
not  be  attached  to  the  United  States,  she  cannot  maintain  that  institution  ten  years, 
and  probably  not  half  that  time."  Mr.  Upshur  to  Mr.  Murphy,  January  16th,  1844. 


EDUCATION    IN    THE    SLAVE    STATES.  35 

trumpet  voice  of  truth  and  right  will  be  hushed,  her  horn  of  power 
will  be  broken,  and  all  her  glory  departed."  Her  Appletons,  — 
yes,  and  her  Websters,  —  will  be  safer  and  stronger  guardians  of 
her  interests,  in  proportion  as  they  take  diligent  note  of  this,  and 
govern  themselves  accordingly.  To  forget  it,  while  it  is  to  trans- 
gress far  weightier  maxims,  is  to  violate  that  which  is  of  the 
gravest  import  of  all,  on  'change ;  it  is  to  be  "  penny  wise  and 
pound  foolish." 


NO.  XII. 

WHAT  HAS  THE  NORTH  TO   DO  WITH   IT?  — ITS   INFLUENCE 
ON  THE  COMPETENCY  OF  VOTERS  AND  RULERS. 

THE  Fifth  Chapter  of  the  Constitution  of  Massachusetts,  in  its 
second  section,  declares  as  follows : 

"  Wisdom  and  knowledge,  as  well  as  virtue,  diffused  generally  among  the  body 
of  the  people,  being  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  their  rights  and  liberties,  and 
as  these  depend  on  spreading  the  opportunities  and  advantages  of  education  in 
the  various  parts  of  the  country,  and  among  the  different  orders  of  the  people,  it 
shall  be  the  duty  of  legislatures  and  magistrates,  in  all  future  periods  of  this 
Common  wealth,  "to  cherish  the  interests  of  literature  and  the  sciences,  *  *  *  * 
to  countenance  and  inculcate  the  principles  of  humanity  and  general  benevolence, 
public  and  private  charity,  industry  and  frugality,  honesty  and  punctuality  in  their 
dealings,  sincerity,  good  humor,  and  all  social  affections,  and  generous  sentiments 
among  the  people."  . 

Massachusetts  established  her  Constitution  in  1780,  when  she 
was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  sovereign  State.  While  her  peo- 
ple were  thus  under  her  own  government  alone,  she  was  of  opinion 
that  they  could  have  no  security  for  their  rights  and  liberties,  any 
longer  than  they  should  be  intelligent  and  virtuous.  What  was  true 
for  her  then,  is  true  for  her  now.  What  was  true  for  her,  was,  and 
is,  equally  true  for  her  sister  States.  None  of  them  can  have  any 
security  for  their  rights  and  liberties  under  the  rule  of  an  ignorant 
and  vicious  population. 

Yet  such  a  rule  the  slave  power  unavoidably  creates ;  and,  the 
slave  power  having  obtained  the  ascendancy  in  our  government, 
under  such  a  rule  do  we  at  present  live.  Does  that  not  concern 
the  North?  Has  it  no  concern  with  the  character  and  competency 
of  those  who  govern  it  ?  If  the  slave  power  had  not  obtained  the 
usurped  ascendancy  which  it  now  wields,  still,  has  the  North  no 
concern  about  the  character  and  competency  of  those  who,  by  the 
Constitution,  share  with  it  the  functions  of  government,  and  are  to 
pass  on  questions  the  most  material  to  its  welfare  ? 

Of  the  thirteen  original  States,  the  population  of  the  four  most 
3* 


36  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

northerly,  in  1840,  was  1,441,081,  and  the  number  of  white  per- 
sons in  them,  over  twenty  years  of  age,  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write,  was  7,530,  or  less  than  one  in  191.  The  free*  population  of 
the  four  southern  old  States,  was  1,976,220,  and  the  number  of  free 
white  persons,  over  twenty  years  of  age,  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write,  was  166,728,  or  one  in  less  than  12.  Massachusetts  had 
4,448  of  this  ignorant  class,  most  of  them  in  the  few  towns  where 
foreign  emigrants  collect.  Virginia,  with  a  total  of  free  inhabitants 
only  fifty-three  thousand  larger,  had  58,787.  In  New  Hampshire, 
the  proportion  of  persons  unable  to  read  and  write  to  the  whole 
free  population,  was  as  one  to  more  than  300,  in  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia  about  as  one  to  13.  In  Connecticut,  one  in  590  could 
neither  read  nor  write ;  in  North  Carolina,  more  than  one  in  9. 
These  are  the  facts,  supposing  the  census  to  have  been  correctly 
taken  in  these  particulars.  But  considering  the  auspices  under 
which  it  was  made,  and  the  class  of  errors  which  vitiate  it,  of  which 
we  gave  some  rather  striking  specimens  the  other  day,  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  the  representation,  alarming  as  it  is,  is  altogether 
more  favorable  to  the  slave  States  than  the  truth  would  warrant. 

The  case  could  not  be  otherwise.  In  slave  States  there  can  be 
no  system  of  universal  public  instruction  for  the  free.  It  is  not  the 
interest  of  the  large  proprietors  to  elevate  the  character  of  their 
poor  neighbors,  for  the  consequence  would  be  an  abatement  of  their 
own  importance  and  political  power.  But  waiving  that,  the  divi- 
sion of  estates  is  such  as  to  put  the  arrangement  out  of  the  question. 
In  New  England,  the  people  in  moderate  circumstances  are  every 
where,  covering  the  face  of  the  country,  so  that  a  school-house  is 
brought  within  a  convenient  distance  of  every  man's  hearth  ;  while 
in  Virginia,  if  a  poor  man  could  get  schooling  for  his  child  on  the 
other  side  of  the  next  plantation,  it  would  take  him  the  whole  day 
to  go  and  come.  The  thing  is  impossible. 

We  have  not  the  statistics  necessary  to  show  the  relative  provi- 
sion made  for  religious  instruction  in  the  Free  and  Slave  States  re- 
spectively. They  would  no  doubt  give  a  similar  result.  In  New 
England,  the  traveller  is  never  out  of  sight  of  the  spires  of  churches, 
betokening  that  every  New  England  family  is  brought  up  in  the 
nurture  and  admonition  of  the  Lord.  In  Virginia,  still  older  than 
New  England,  and  in  the  Carolinas,  not  much  less  ancient,  out  of 
the  cities  one  travels  dismal  miles  without  once  seeing  that  cheering 
token  of  civilised  humanity  ;  and  when,  every  now  and  then,  it  is 
met  with,  its  wretched,  tumble-down  condition  indicates  scarcely 
less  painfully  the  degree  of  importance  attached  to  the  use  to  which 
it  is  devoted.  Of  a  fine  day  the  women  and  children  may  make  a 
journey  from  some  "  Swallow  Barn  "  to  some  distant  church  in  the 
woods,  to  say  their  prayers  and  get  a  word  of  exhortation  from  some 
transient  preacher;  but  neighborhoods,  where  the  institutions  of  the 
Gospel  may  be  regularly  supported,  and  where  from  Sabbath  to 
Sabbath  men  may  meet  to  recognise  their  mutual  relation  under  the 


EDUCATION    IN   THE    SLAVE    STATES.  37 

roof  of  the  common  Parent,  and  learn  the  lessons  which  may  make 
them  mutually  helpful  during  the  week,  such  neighborhoods,  in  a 
region  cut  up  into  large  properties  for  slave  cultivation,  must  needs 
be  few  and  far  between. 

We  are  not  going  to  write  a  chapter  on  the  morality  of  the  free 
people  of  slave  countries.  But  what  is  to  be  expected  of  a  popu- 
lation, of  which  a  considerable  part  is  brought  up  without  acquaint- 
ance with  the  very  elements  of  knowledge,  and  a  much  larger,  with 
extremely  limited  opportunities  for  religious  instruction  ;  among 
whom  the  rich,  living  on  the  compelled  labor  of  others,  are  accus- 
tomed to  the  exercise  of  force,  and,  having  no  regular  occupation 
to  task  and  balance  their  minds,  are  the  more  accessible  to  every 
noxious  excitement ;  and  the  poor,  unfurnished  with  mental  resour- 
ces, and  seeing  labor  accounted  dishonorable,  are  robbed  of  that 
self-respect  which  is  the  guardian  of  all  the  virtues,  and  confined 
for  their  enjoyments  to  the  gross  range  of  physical  indulgence  ? 
What  is  to  be  expected  of  the  slave-master  in  his  other  relations, 
when,  according  to  the  slave-holder,  Mr.  Jefferson,  a  the  whole 
commerce  between  master  and  slave  is  a  perpetual  exercise  of  the 
boisterous  passions  ;  *  *  *  the  child  looks  on  ;  catches  the  linea- 
ments of  wrath ;  gives  loose  to  the  worst  of  passions ;  and,  thus 
nursed  and  educated,  and  daily  exercised  in  tyranny,  cannot  but  be 
stamped  by  it  with  odious  peculiarities  ? "  What  is  to  be  expected, 
but  what  we  read  of,  duels,  assassinations,  street  broils,  Lynch  law, 
and  so  on  ?  Such  proceedings  as  burning  negroes  would  perhaps 
hardly  be  expected,  even  in  this  state  of  things  ;  but  here  reasonable 
expectation  is  surpassed,  and  they  do  occur. 

We  of  the  North  know  nothing  of  these  doings  except  so  much 
as  the  newspapers  on  the  spot  see  fit  to  tell  us,  but  these  convey  in- 
teresting information  enough  concerning  the  culture  and  moderation 
of  the  fellow-citizens  under  whose  sway  we  live.  We  have  before 
us  a  small  collection  of  anecdotes  of  brutality  from  such  papers, 
embracing  a  period  of  three  years.  Their  details  would  make  a 
book,  which  we  have  no  thought  of  doing.  Sometimes  they  gen- 
eralize the  facts.  "  Why,"  says  a  Mobile  paper,  "  do  we  hear  of 
stabbings  and  shootings  almost  daily  in  some  part  or  other  of  our 
State  ?  "  "  Almost  every  exchange  paper  that  reaches  us,"  says  a 
Mississippi  journal,  "  contains  some  inhuman  and  revolting  case  of 
murder,  or  death  by  violence."  The  New  Orleans  Bee  thinks  that 
"  if  crime  increases  as  it  has,  it  will  soon  become  the  most  powerful 
agent  in  destroying  life ; "  and  Judge  Canonge,  of  the  same  city, 
said  from  the  bench,  "  without  some  powerful  and  certain  remedy, 
our  streets  will  become  butcheries  overflowing  with  the  blood  of  our 
citizens."  It  is  this  state  of  society  from  which  legislators  come, 
and  bring  their  accomplishments  and  habits  with  them.  So  the 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of  Arkansas,  not  very 
long  ago,  settled  a  question  of  order  by  stabbing  a  member  mortally 
with  a  bowie  knife,  on  the  floor  of  the  House.  So  Mr.  Campbell 


38  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

and  Mr.  Maury  of  Tennessee,  and  in  the  same  month  Mr.  Bell -and 
Mr.  Turney  of  the  same  State,  fought  at  fisti-cuffs  at  Washington 
in  the  Hall  where  they  sat  as  Representatives.  So  Mr.  Peyton  of 
Tennessee,  and  Mr.  Wise  of  Virginia,  went  armed  with  pistols  and 
dirks  into  a  Committee-room  of  Congress,  and  threatened  to  kill  a 
witness  while  giving  his  evidence.  So  Mr.  Senator  McDuffie  of 
South  Carolina,  and  Colonel  Gumming  of  Georgia,  worried  and 
scandalized  the  decent  part  of  the  nation,  season  after  season,  with 
a  publication  of  their  successive  plans  for  putting  an  end  to  each 
other  ;  — a  thing  which,  after  all,  they  contrived  not  to  effect. 

Such  would  not  be  the  Representatives  of  an  enlightened  and 
self-respecting  constituency.  What  has  the  North  to  do  with  slave- 
ry 1  As  much  it  has  to  do  with  good  government ;  as  much  as  it 
has  to  do  with  the  difference  between  being  governed  by  enlightened 
and  orderly,  or  by  ignorant,  lawless  and  vicious  fellow-citizens. 


NO.  XIII. 

WHAT  HAS  THE  NORTH  TO  DO  WITH  IT?  — COSTLY  AND 
WICKED  WARS. 

THE  North  has  something  to  do  with  the  National  Legislation, 
which  has  charge  of  all  the  great  affairs  of  the  national  body,  and 
presents  it  before  the  world  and  before  history  as  a  ruffian  or  a  Chris- 
tian people,  according  as  a  ruffian  or  Christian  policy  guides  its  coun- 


Outrages  of  the  slave-holding  administrations  follow  each  other 
so  fast,  that  the  latest  soon  throws  those  which  have  preceded  into 
forge tfulness.  £.*,  UU8*» 

It  is  but  fifteen  years,  since  the  moral  sense  of  the  country  and  of 
the  world  was  shocked  by  the  barbarous  treatment  of  the  Cherokee 
Indians.  By  successive  cessions  of  territory,  they  had  become  re- 
duced to  a  tract  of  five  millions  of  acres  between  the  States  of  Geor- 
gia and  Alabama.  Sixteen  successive  treaties  had  been  made  with 
them  by  the  United  States,  recognizing  their  competency  to  treat  as 
independent  communities,  and  guarantying  to  them  the  soil  which 
they  had  determined  to  retain.  Under  the  instructions  of  Christian 
missionaries,  they  had  abandoned  the  practices  of  savage  life,  be- 
taken themselves  to  the  stationary  pursuits  of  grazing  and  agriculture, 
and  settled  into  an  orderly  and  well-conducted  community.  They 
had  schools,  churches,  books,  and  a  printing-press  and  newspaper. 

But  the  people  of  Georgia,  one  in  every  dozen  of  whom  could 
not  so  much  as  read  the  plainest  English  the  Cherokees  could  write, 
coveted  their  neighbors'  houses  and  lands ;  and  in  1827,  an  Act 


REMOVAL  OF  THE  CHEROKEES.  39 

of  the  Legislature  of  that  State  asserted  the  right  of  taking  a  forci- 
ble possession.  The  next  year  Georgia  extended  her  jurisdiction  (as 
she  called  it)  over  the  territory,  annexing  it  by  parts  to  certain  of 
her  counties,  and  at  the  same  time  enacting  that  no  Cherokee  should 
be  a  party  or  a  witness  in  any  of  her  courts.  The  following  year 
she  enacted  further,  that  if  any  Cherokee  Chief  should  attempt  to 
prevent  the  people  of  his  tribe  from  emigrating,  he  should  be  liable 
to  imprisonment  for  four  years,  and  that  if  any  Cherokee  should  at- 
tempt to  prevent  a  Chief  from  selling  the  whole  country,  he  should 
be  imprisoned  not  less  than  four  nor  more  than  six  years. 

What  was  the  government  of  the  United  States  doing  all  this 
while,  —  that  government,  which,  for  valuable  considerations,  and 
by  more  solemn  treaties  than  there  are  months  in  the  year,  had 
stipulated  to  protect  them  against  all  the  world  ?  It  was  doing  the 
cowardly  injustice,  which  the  slave  power  dictated  ;  little  Georgia 
stormed,*  and  her  natural  allies  stood  by  her,  for  the  Cherokee  coun- 
try was  charged  with  having  given  refuge  to  runaways.  In  1830, 
the  Indians  appealed  to  General  Jackson  for  defence  against  what 
they  justly  characterised  as  "a  wanton  usurpation  of  power,  sanc- 
tioned neither  by  the  common  law  of  the  land,  nor  by  the  laws  of 
nature ; "  and  were  answered,!  that  they  were  to  expect  nothing 
from  him,  but  must  either  submit  to  Georgia,  or  to  a  removal  to  lands 
beyond  the  Mississippi ;  and,  suiting  the  action  to  the  word,  the 
President  presently  removed  the  troops  which  had  been  stationed 
lor  their  defence.  By  an  application  for  a  writ  of  injunction  against 
Georgia,  they  brought  their  case  into  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  where  it  went  off  on  a  technical  objection.  An  over- 
whelming force  was  poured  into  their  country.  There  was  nothing 
further  for  them  ;  and  they  were  removed  from  their  homes  to  a  dis- 
tant region  beyond  the  Mississippi,  there  to  remain,  under  just  such 
another  guaranty  as  those  of  which  they  had  already  experienced 
the  value,  till  Arkansas  shall  be  populous  enough  to  be  disposed  to 
extend  her  jurisdiction  over  them  as  Georgia  had  done  before.  Un- 
der the  direction  of  General  Scott  the  removal  was  as  humanely 
conducted  as  the  cruel  circumstances  of  the  case  allowed.  Their 
lands  were  distributed  by  lottery  among  the  people  of  Georgia,  and 
the  ineffaceable  stain  remains  on  the  honor  of  the  nation.  Its  char- 
acter stands  settled  by  a  decree  of  the  highest  national  tribunal. 
In  September,  1831,  three  missionaries  were  sentenced  by  a  Geor- 

*  During  Mr.  Adams's  administration,  when  treaties  were  considered  to  have 
some  binding  force,  Governor  Troup,  of  Georgia,  wrote  as  follows  (Feb.  17th,  1827,) 
to  the  Secretary  of  War,  in  reply  to  an  intimation  that  the  Indians  would  be  pro- 
tected :  "  You  will  distinctly  understand,  that  I  feel  it  to  be  my  duty  to  resist  to  the 
utmost  any  military  attack  which  the  Government  of  the  United  States  shall  think 
proper  to  make  on  the  territory,  the  people,  or  the  sovereignty  of  Georgia ;  and  all 
measures  necessary  to  the  performance  of  this  duty,  according  to  our  limited  means, 
are  in  progress.  From  the  first  decisive  act  of  hostility,  you  will  be  considered  and 
treated  as  a  public  enemy." 

f  Letter  of  Mr.  Eaton,  Secretary  of  War,  April  18th,  1829. 


40  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

gia  Court  to  four  years'  imprisonment  in  the  penitentiary  for  residing 
among  the  Cherokees,  without  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance    to  that 
State.     The  case  was  carried  up  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Uni- 
ted States,  who  decreed  (May  3d,  1832,)  that  the  imprisonment  was 
illegal,  because  the  law  of  Georgia,   assuming  jurisdiction  over  the 
Cherokee  country,  was  contrary  to  laws  and  treaties  of  the  United 
States,  and  therefore  null  and  void.       The   missionaries   were  dis- 
charged ten  months  after,  but  the  poor  Indians  were  without  redress. 
The  Seminole  troubles,  of  twenty-five  years'  duration  from  first  to 
last,  are  fresher  in  the  minds  of  this  generation  ;  a  bill  of  twenty 
millions  of  dollars  (and  how  much  more  nobody  knows)  has   help- 
ed to  keep  their  memory  green.     At  the  close  of  the  war  of  1812,  a 
number  of  runaway  slaves,  from  Georgia  and  elsewhere,  collected  in 
Florida^  then  a_.Spanish   possession,  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  above 
the  mouth  of  the  Apalachicola  river,  where  they  fenced  in  land  for 
farming,  provided  themselves  with  arms,  and  built  a  fort.    The  place 
of  course  became  a  resort  for  fugitive  slaves,  and  as  such  attracted 
the  notice  of  our  government.     General  Jackson,  then  commanding 
on  the  frontier,  was  instructed  to  notify  the  Spanish  Commandant 
at  Pensacola,  that  the  fort  must  be  destroyed,  and  he  issued  orders 
to  General  Gaines  to  destroy  it  accordingly,  and  to  restore   the  ne- 
groes to  their  masters.    Colonel  Clinch  attacked  it  by  land,  and  Com- 
modore Patterson  by  sea.    It  was  blown  up  with  hot  shot,  and  about 
three  hundred  negroes  were  killed.     The  survivors  were  sent  home 
to  their  masters.    The  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States  had  been 
out  on  a  slave-hunting  expedition,  and    had  caught  and  butchered 
the  blacks  at  the  expense  of  the  slavery-hating  freemen  of  the  North. 
The  Indians  resented  the  death  of  some  of  their  friends  in  the  negro 
fort,  and  thus  began  the  first  Seminole  war,  which  involved  us  with 
Spain  and  England,  and  for  a  time  threatened  serious  consequences 
with  those  powers. 

General  Jackson's  campaign  of  1818  quieted  the  Indians  for  a 
while,  and  in  1821  Florida  became  ours  by  purchase.  The  Indians 
in  this  territory,  believed  then  to  number  about  two  thousand  in  all, 
scattered  in  little  villages  and  hamlets,  were  collected  into  a  tract, 
near  the  centre  of  the  peninsula,  where,  notwithstanding  the  neigh- 
borhood of  a  strong  military  post,  they  continued  still  to  harbor  ne- 
groes. For  this  and  other  reasons,  their  presence  was  unwelcome, 
and  in  1827,  a  proposal  was  made  to  them,  on  the  part  of  the  Uni- 
ted States  Government,  to  remove  beyond  the  Mississippi ;  which, 
however,  they  positively  declined  to  entertain.  In  1832  the  busi- 
ness was  taken  up  again  more  resolutely,  and,  by  the  treaty  of 
Payne's  Landing,  they  consented  to  an  arrangement,  according  to 
which,  if  a  delegation  from  themselves  to  explore  the  country  provid- 
ed for  their  settlement,  should  return  with  a  favorable  report,  they 
were  to  consent  to  emigrate. 

This  treaty  was  differently  interpreted  by  President  Jackson  and 
the  Indians.  A  large  part  of  the  nation,  burning  with  a  sense  of 


SEMINOLE    WARS.  41 

former  wrongs,  and  believing  themselves  to  be  now  over-reached 
and  outraged  anew,  refused  at  all  events  to  remove.  The  President 
sent  a  military  force  to  compel  their  acquiescence,  and  at  the  close 
of  1835  another  Seven  Years'  War  broke  out,  in  which  a  few  miser-  i 
able  savages  defied  the  whole  power  and  resources  of  this  vigorous  I 
nation.    The  President  estimated  the  number  of  the  Seminole  war- 
riors at  four  hundred.       The  Secretary  at  War  rated  it  as  high  as 
seven  hundred  and  fifty.    The  disbursing  agent  in  Floirda  reckoned 
the  whole  population,  including  men,  women,  and  children,  Indians 
and  negroes,  at  three  thousand.       Against  them,  in  addition  to  the 
regular  troops,  had  been  marshalled,  as  early  as  1840,  more  than 
fourteen  thousand  volunteers  from  the  neighboring  States,*  and  in 
the  middle  of  that  year  the  expense  already  incurred  had  been  es- 
timated at  twenty  millions  of  dollars.f       But  the  runaway  negroes, 
more  or  fewer,  whom  a  few  hundreds  of  outlawed  Indians  could  har- 
bor, were  to  be  caught  again  at  whatever  cost  of  American  life  and 
treasure.       "  I  have  to  ask  your  particular  attention  "  wrote  the 
Secretary  of  War  to  the  Commanding  General,  January  21st,  1836, 
"  to  the  measures  indicated  to  prevent  the  removal  of  those  negroes, 
and  to  insure  their  restoration.       You  will  allow  no  terms  to  the  In- 
dians, until  every  living  slave  in  their  possession,  belonging  to  a  white 
man  is  given  up."     This  was  the  great  sine  qua  non  of  a  pacification. 
Without  it,  there  must  be  interminable  war.    The  North  had  plenty 
of  lives  and  money  to  spare,  and   these  must  insure  Georgia  and 
Alabama  against  the  loss  of  a  single  runaway  negro.       What  wor- 
thier test  could  there  be  of  Northern  loyalty  ?     What  fitter  use  for 
Northern  blood  and  money  ?J 

They  did  not  quite  get  us  into  a  war  with  England  about  the  self- 
emancipated  slaves  of  the  Enterprise  and  Creole,  but  it  is  no  thanks 
to  Mr.  Calhoun  or  his  Thrasonic  backers  that  they  did  not.  It 
seemed  at  one  time  getting  to  be  a  very  pretty  quarrel,  and  had 
John  Bull  been  a  more  favorable  subject  for  Southern  valor  to  prac- 
tice upon,  it  may  be  that  we  should  have  argued  it  to  the  tithe  part 
of  a  hair. 

What  has  the  North  to  do  with  the  Slave  Power  1  Just  as  much 
as  belongs  to  its  share  of  the  waste,  annoyance  and  disgrace  which 
the  cupidity  of  the  wayward  and  domineering  Slave  Power  is  con- 
tinually bringing  on  the  country. 

*  Report  of  the  Adjutant  General,  in  House  Document,  No.  8,  26th  Congress,  2d 
Session. 

t    Speech  of  Mr.  Everett  of  Vermont,  in  the  House,  July  14th,  1840. 

t  An  order  of  General  Jessup,  of  August  3d,  1837,  respecting  captured  property 
of  the  Seminoles,  announces  that "  their  negroes,  cattle  and  horses,  will  belong  to 
the  corps  by  which  they  are  captured."  This  was  an  army  which  we  of  the  North 
paid  to  keep  in  the  field.  But  what  has  the  North  to  do  with  slaves  ?  According  to 
another  order,  (Sept.  6th,)  "the  Seminole  negroes  captured  by  the  army,  will  be  taken 
on  account  of  Government,  and  held  subject  to  the  order  of  the  Secretary  of  War." 


42  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


NO.  XIV. 

WHAT  HAS   THE  NORTH  TO  DO  WITH  IT?  —THE  NORTH  DE- 
FRAUDED AND  BROW-BEATEN   BY -ITS  COMMON  LEGISLATION. 

THE  common  legislation  of  the  dominant  Slave  Power  is  shame- 
lessly unjust  to  the  North.  The  Legislative  records  of  every  year 
contain  the  constantly  accumulating  evidence  to  this  point.  Nothing 
short  of  volumes  would  tell  the  story.  Let  us  be  content  with  a 
case  or  two,  which  are  yet  fresh  in  memory.  Besides  the  tariff  of 
1846,  which  cripples  Northern  industry  on  so  immense  a  scale,  two 
instances  have  just  occurred,  which,  of  however  inferior  importance, 
are  fair  specimens  of  the  style  in  which  such  things  have  been  man- 
aged, ever  since  the  Slave  Power  has  had  every  thing  its  own  way. 

The  United  States  owe  a  large  sum  to  Massachusetts  for  military 
expenses,  during  the  war  of  1812.  As  to  a  portion  of  the  claim, 
questions  have  been  raised,  whether  the  expenditure  was  under  such 
circumstances,  as 'to  entitle  to  remuneration  by  the  United  States. 
But  another  large  portion  stands  strictly  on  the  ground  of  a  bondjide 
debt,  without  any  such  doubtful  principles  to  embarrass  it.  As  such, 
to  the  amount  of  $250,000,  more  or  less,  it  was  long  ago  audited 
and  allowed  by  the  officers  of  the  Treasury.  But  it  cannot  be  paid 
without  an  appropriation  by  Congress  ;  and  that  appropriation,  being, 
as  it  is,  due  to  Massachusetts,  will  be  forth-coming  from  the  Slave 
Power  just  at  the  happy  time,  when  the  Greek  Calends  come  round. 
A  clause,  providing  for  it,  was  inserted  in  the  last  Appropriation  Bill, 
but  was  struck  out  in  the  House.  The  party  is  content  to  take  the 
position  of  a  rich  scoundrel,  who  owns  that  he  owes,  and  says  that 
he  does  not  choose  to  pay. 

At  the  time  of  the  changes  of  government  in  France,  fifty  years 
ago,  a  large  amount  of  property  of  northern  merchants,  estimated, 
if  we  recollect  right,  at  some  twelve  millions  of  dollars,  was  captured 
on  the  high  seas,  without  color  of  right,  by  armed  vessels  of  the 
French  Republic.  Our  government,  as  was  its  duty,  claimed  remu- 
neration. The  French,  on  the  other  hand,  alleged  causes  of  complaint 
against  us.  By  the  convention  with  Napoleon,  of  Sept.  30th,  1800, 
these  reclamations  were  mutually  abandoned.  Each  government,  for 
a  valuable  consideration,  discharged  the  other  from  its  alleged  obliga- 
tions, and  of  course  became  answerable  to  its  own  citizens  in  the 
place  of  the  party  released.  The  Constitution  says  that  "  private 
property  shall  not  be  taken  for  public  use  without  just  compensation." 
Here  private  property  was  taken  for  public  use.  The  public  bought 
certain  treaty  advantages  ;  and  the  purchase  money  was  a  waiver  of 
the  indemnity  due  to  certain  American  citizens  from  the  foreign  gov- 
ernment. But  that  money  was  due  at  the  North  ;  the  Slave  Power 
was  able  to  keep  it  from  its  owners ;  and  it  has  kept  it  to  this  day. 


FREEDOM    OF    SPEECH,  PRESS,    AND    PETITION.  43 

Some  of  it  belonged  to  rich  men,  and  some  to  poor  men,  women 
and  children.  Three  years  ago,  William  Smith,  an  inmate  of  the 
poor-house  at  Northampton,  a  blind  old  man,  of  estimable  charac- 
ter, formerly  a  thrifty  ship-master,  petitioned  the  Legislature  of  Mas- 
sachusetts to  interest  itself  with  the  General  Government  to  obtain 
for  him  some  portion  of  ten  thousand  dollars,  of  which  he  had  been 
robbed  more  than  forty  years  before  by  French  privateers,  and  which, 
ever  since  1800,  the  American  Government  had  justly  owed  him,  in 
consequence  of  the  settlement  in  the  treaty  of  that  year.  From  the 
time  of  the  treaty  to  this  time,  the  claim  has  been  repeatedly  brought 
forward,  about  as  often  as  there  has  been  opportunity,  amid  the  din 
of  parties,  for  such  a  matter  to  get  a  hearing.  As  often  as  it  has 
been  listened  to,  it  has  gained  the  approval  of  most  minds  not  dishon- 
est. Committees  have  repeatedly  reported  in  its  favor.  From  time 
to  time  bills  providing  for  it  have  been  passed  by  one  or  the  other 
House ;  but  the  Slave  Power  has  always,  till  the  last  session,  suc- 
cessfully resisted  its  passage  through  both.  At  length,  at  a  late  day 
of  the  recent  session,  the  House  passed  a  bill,  in  concurrence  with 
the  Senate,  providing  for  compensation  to  the  claimants  to  the 
amount  of  five  millions  of  dollars,  payable  in  land  scrip,  an  utterly 
inadequate  allowance,  but  still  better  than  the  nothing  which  had 
been  given  to  the  dead,  and  with  which  the  survivors  had  had  to 
rest  so  long  dissatisfied.  Whether  the  slave  interest  allowed  this 
vote  to  pass,  for  the  sake  of  conciliating  favor,  on  the  part  of  its 
friends,  to  some  other  measure,  and  with  the  knowledge  that  the 
President  would  interpose  his  authority  to  prevent  its  becoming  a 
law,  the  public  is  not  yet  informed.  That  authority  however  he 
did  interpose,  the  reasons  assigned  by  him  in  his  veto  message  being 
substantially  that  he  wanted  the  money  to  carry  on  the  war  for  the 
further  establishment  of  slavery  at  the  South,  and  that  the  justice  of  j 
Congress  was  so  sufe  and  prompt,  that,  had  the  claim  been  a  good  • 
one,  it  would  long  ago  have  been  allowed  and  settled. 

But  these  are  only  acts  of  dishonesty,  which  we  can  afford  to  put 
up  with,  disagreeable  as  it  is  to  men  or  communities  to  be  robbed  of 
their  honest  dues.  They  are  repudiation,  to  which  the  ruling  spirit 
in  the  cabinet  got  well  used  before  he  came  from  his  Mississippi 
home.  Let  them  go.  If  the  Slave  Power  can  bear  the  infamy,  we 
can  bear  the  robbery.  Only  they  deserve  a  passing  word  as  indi- 
cating the  feeling  which  exists  among  slave-holders  towards  the  in- 
dustrious part  of  the  country,  and  that  absence  of  all  sense  of  justice 
which  might  not  unnaturally  be  expected  to  take  possession  of  those 
who  are  contented  to  live  on  the  forced  labor  of  others. 

There  are  other  wrongs,  to  which  it  is  by  no  means  so  easy  to  be 
reconciled.  Freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press  is  a  right  of  great 
consideration  with  us.  Our  ancestors,  on  the  other  side  of  the  water, 
worked  their  way  to  it  through  many  a  weary  and  bloody  struggle,  and 
when  we  got  it  recognized  in  our  Federal  Constitution,  we  flattered  our- 
selves, easy  souls !  that  all  was  safe  enough.  How  is  it  now  ?  On  the  ques- 


44  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

tion  more  interesting  than  any  other  of  the  present  day  to  humanity 
and  patriotism,  a  man  cannot  freely  speak  or  print  his  mind  and  live, 
south  of  Mason  &,  Dixon's  line.  There  is  no  such  espionage  on  the 
face  of  the  globe,  as  that  which  is  on  the  watch  for  this  offence. 
France  and  Russia,  in  their  most  efficient  plans  of  police,  never  im- 
agined the  like.  It  is  not  that  the  laws  will  make»way^  with  a  man, 
but, — what  is  more  certain,  and  less  regular  and  decent,  —  that  the 
neighbors  will.  Cassius  M.  Clay  in  Kentucky  escaped  with  the 
breaking  up  of  his  press ;  but  if  they  did  not  shoot  or  stab  him,  it 
was  because  he  was  reputed  able  (in  the  phrase  of  his  country)  to 
deal  in  that  rough  way  with  two  or  three  times  his  own  weight. 
Lovejoy  they  had  shot  for  the  same  offence  not  long  before.  And 
that  was  in  a  State  called  free.  But  Alton  was  only  distant  by  the 
width  of  tne  river  from  that  Missouri,  which  we  endowed  with  all 
the  immunities  of  slavery  five  and  twenty  years  ago ;  and  it  was  not 
to  be  endured  that  a  freeman  should  speak  his  mind  so  near  to  the 
tabooed  ground,  so  long  as  cord  or  lead  could  stop  him. 

The  practice  of  petitions  on  the  part  of  the  governed  has  been  al- 
lowed by  the  harshest  governments.  We  flattered  ourselves  we  had 
done  something  safe,  and  something  no  more  than  reasonable,  when, 
instead  of  an  allowance,  we  had  established  in  the  Constitution,  "  the 
right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble  and  to  petition  the  govern- 
ment for  a  redress  of  grievances."  But  the  Slave  Power,  of  late 
years,  has  not  so  much  as  permitted  its  northern  vassals  to  petition. 
For  ten  years,  the  following  atrocious  provision  stood  among  the 
Rules  and  Orders  of  the  national  House  of  Representatives ;  viz. 
that  "  no  petition,  memorial,  resolution,  or  other  paper  praying  the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  or  any  State  or  Ter- 
ritory, or  of  the  Slave  Trade  between  the  States  or  Territories  of 
the  United  Slates,  in  which  it  now  exists,  shall  be  received  by  this 
House,  or  entertained  in  any  way  whatever."  Much  as  the  Free 
States  have  shown  themselves  ready  to  bear,  this  bare-faced  insult 
was  found  to  be  arousing  their  spirit,  and  making  abolitionists  among 
them,  a  little  too  fast ;  and  at  the  commencement  of  the  last  Session, 
by  a  close  vote,  the  Rule  was  repealed.  But  all  that  has  been  yet 
gained  is,  that  such  papers  now  get  as  far  as  the  clerk's  table,  and 
there  sleep  the  sleep  of  death. 

What  have  men  of  the  North  to  do  with  the  Slave  Power  1  It 
makes  the  national  legislation  insolently  hostile  to  their  rights  and 
interests.  It  wrests  from  them  the  privilege  of  so  much  as  making 
their  sense  of  public  grievances  known  to  their  rulers.  And  it  si- 
lences the  free  voice  and  the  free  press  which  would  rebuke  the  most 
frightful  evil  that  afflicts  the  land. 


OUTRAGES    ON    NORTHERN    VISITORS.  45 


NO.  XV. 

WHAT  HAS  THE    NORTH  TO  DO  WITH   IT  ?  —  OUTRAGES 
ON    NORTHERN    CITIZENS. 

IN  the  year  1830,  there  sailed  a  ship  from  the  port  of  Salem,  in 
Massachusetts,  called  the  Friendship.  She  carried  dollars  and 
opium,  and  went  to  the  Island  of  Sumatra  for  pepper.  The  people 
of  that  hospitable  region  loved  the  coin  and  the  drug,  and  one  day 
when  the  captain,  with  part  of  his  crew,  was  on-shore,  they  visited 
the  vessel,  killed  two  of  the  men,  drove  the  rest  overboard,  and 
helped  themselves  to  her  cargo.  Such  were  the  police  laws  of 
Qtialla  Battoo. 

News  of  the  transaction  came  to  America.  The  American 
government  was  not  satisfied  with  such  treatment  of  its  citizens, 
going  about  their  lawful  business.  A  big  ship  was  fitted  out,  the 
Potomac,  commanded  by  Commodore  Downes.  He  anchored  off 
Qualla  Battoo,  landed  his  ship's  company  by  night,  stormed  the 
forts,  put  to  the  sword  all  the  people  he  could  reach,  and  reduced 
the  settlement  to  ashes.  And  the  people  of  the  place  have  de- 
meaned themselves  quietly  and  peaceably  to  American  visitors  from 
that  day  to  this. 

About  the  same  time,  and  since,  certain  other  vessels,  on  their 
lawful  occasions,  sailed  from  Boston  in  Massachusetts,  to  Charles- 
ton in  South  Carolina.  On  their  arrival,  the  people  of  that  region 
came  on  board,  took  out  certain  individuals  of  their  crews,  and 
locked  them  up  in  jail  on  shore.  When  the  vessels  were  ready  to 
depart,  they  brought  the  men  on  board  again,  provided  the  captains 
would  pay  a  ransom,  called  the  expense  of  the  detention,  and 
enter  into  certain  bonds.  Otherwise  the  prisoners  were  sold  into 
perpetual  slavery.  That  all  ever  did  get  back  again  by  this  process 
to  their  vessels  and  their  homes,  would  be  an  extravagant  supposi- 
tion ;  because,  barring  accidents,  it  is  not  an  unheard  of  thing  for 
a  shabby  ship-master,  sooner  than  be  put  to  trouble,  to  be  willing 
to  leave  a  man  or  two  behind,  where  they  would  never  be  heard  of 
more,  particularly  if  he  owed  them  either  a  spite  or  a  large  balance 
of  wages.  And  such  as  were  not  thus  brought  back  again  were 
made  slaves,  they  and  their  posterity  forever.  Such  were  the 
police  laws  of  South  Carolina. 

There  were  some  points  of  resemblance  in  the  two  cases,  and 
some  of  difference.  One  of  the  principal  differences  was  in  the 
result.  Qualla  Battoo  is  in  ruins,  and  Charleston  stands  to  this 
hour.  That  the  latter  stands,  is  not  through  defect  of  right  or 
power  in  the  injured  party.  Right?  "That  may  be  called  an 
equitable  government,"  said  an  ancient  sage,  "  in  which  an  injury 
to  the  humblest  citizen  is  resented  as  if  done  to  the  whole  State." 


46  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

Power?  Of  the  counties  of  Massachusetts,  there  are  not  less 
than  four,  any  three  of  which  have  an  aggregate  population  greater 
than  the  free  population  of  all  South  Carolina,  —  brave,  hardy  men, 
who  went  to  school  when  they  were  boys,  and  go  to  church  now 
they  are  grown  up,  with  no  domestic  enemy  to  hamper  them  by 
their  own  beds  and  boards,  with  only  love  and  loyalty  on  their 
hearth-stones.  If  there  had  been  nothing  to  listen  to  but  the 
maxims  of  harsher  times,  it  would  not  have  been  six  weeks  after 
the  first  outrage,  before  it  would  either  have  been  humbly  atoned 
for,  or  a  Massachusetts  fleet  would  have  been  riding  at  the  con- 
fluence of  Ashley  and  Cooper  Rivers,  and  Charleston  would  have 
been  a  heap  of  bloody  ashes. 

Police  laws,  indeed  !  Suppose  the  people  of  the  Pepper  Coast 
had  said,  We  cannot  get  opium  on  the  terms  we  like,  without  rob- 
bing your  ships,  and  killing  your  people  ?  What  would  our  gov- 
ernment have  replied  ?  Precisely  what  in  substance  it  actually  did  ; 
Get  your  opium  cheap,  or  get  it  dear,  or  go  without  it ;  but  touch 
a  hair  of  the  head  of  one  of  our  people  at  your  peril.  And  sup- 
pose the  people  of  South  Carolina  say,  We  cannot  have  a  comfort- 
able enjoyment  of  slavery,  which  makes  cotton  and  rice  for  us  to 
be  rich  and  luxurious  with,  unless,  for  its  security,  we  imprison, 
whip,  and  sell  free  men  and  women  of  other  States,  —  what  is  the 
natural  and  due  answer  ?  Raise  cotton  and  rice  cheap,  or  raise 
them  dear,  or  raise  them  not  at  all ;  that  is  your  affair  ;  but  as  to 
imprisoning,  whipping,  and  selling  our  people,  that,  at  all  events,  you 
are  not  to  do.  Have  slaves  among  yourselves,  and  make  slaves  of 
one  another,  or  not,  as  may  suit  yourselves ;  but,  at  all  events, 
make  no  slaves  of  us.  We  must  come  and  go  among  you  without 
molestation.  If  you  say  that  these  proceedings  are  essential  to 
slavery,  you  only  proclaim  that  the  thing  is  too  bad  to  be.  Have  a 
care  that  we  do  not  take  you  at  your  word.  If  slavery  be  what  you 
declare,  slavery  is  a  simply  intolerable  evil,  and  the  whole  civilized 
world,  for  its  own  safety,  must  combine  for  its  extirpation.  You 
only  make  out  that  its  lair  is  a  pirate's  nest,  and  if  so,  it  must  be 
broken  up  forthwith,  for  the  honor  of  humanity,  and  the  quiet  of 
decent  people. 

But  the  folly  of  the  measure  is  not  less  signal  than  its  impudent 
wickedness.  Requisite  for  self-preservation  ?  No  such  thing. 
Precaution  ?  No ;  it  is  mere  temper.  It  is  only  a  spoiled  child's 
rage.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  not  quite  such  arrant  cowards  as 
the  plea  pretends.  Without  entertaining  any  extravagant  sense  of 
the  valor  of  the  chivalry,  or  absolutely  thinking  them  the  fire-eaters 
that  in  one  moment  they  profess  to  be,  it  would  still  be  doing  them 
sheer  injustice  to  suppose  that  they  are  possessed  by  such  craven 
alarms  as,  in  the  next  breath,  they  put  forward  to  excuse  the  bar- 
barity in  question.  And,  if  they  are  so  frightened,  why  do  they 
let  free  white  men  from  Massachusetts  go  at  large  on  their  shore, 
any  more  than  black  ?  Why  do  they  not  clap  us  in  jail  too,  to  be 


OUTRAGES    ON    NORTHERN    VISITORS.  47 

ransomed  out,  or  sold  ?  Do  they  suppose  that  white  Massachusetts 
men  are  less  dangerous  than  black,  because  they  have  less  abolition- 
ism in  them,  or  have  less  enterprise  and  contrivance  to  carry  out  an 
abolition  scheme  ?  Why  do  they  not  take  British  colored  seamen 
out  of  their  ships  ?  Are  British  seamen  less  penetrated  with  aboli- 
tion sentiments,  or  less  likely  to  express  them,  than  their  fellows 
from  New  England  ?  On  the  contrary,  are  they  not  ten  times 
more  so,  from  knowing  they  are  subjects  of  a  government  that  will 
not  see  them  wronged  ?  The  Charleston  people  tried  it  once  or 
twice  with  them.  But  the  British  Lion,  as  he  lay  coiled  up  sleepily 
in  Downing  street,  heard  from  across  the  water  the  words  of  exe- 
cration so  familiar  to  his  ear  when  any  of  his  tars  are  in  trouble, 
and  he  gave  a  growl  and  a  snap,*  and  the  Carolina  people  presently 
found  out  that  it  was  perfectly  safe  to  let  British  blacks  come  and 
go  without  hindrance  or  harm,  even  though  they  should  be  lately 
emancipated  slaves  from  Barbadoes  or  Jamaica  ;  while  they  cannot 
see  to  this  day  that  it  is  at  all  safe  to  take  the  same  course  with 
blacks  from  Massachusetts.  And  accordingly  there  have  been 
cases  in  which  Massachusetts  freemen,  fleeing  in  the  harbor  of 
Charleston  to  British  vessels,  have  found  that  protection  under  a  } 
foreign  flag  which  the  laws  of  their  own  country  did  not  avail  to  ( 
afford. 

The  silly  falsehood  of  its  being  a  measure  of  self-preservation 
carries  its  refutation  on  its  face.  A  poor  fellow,  shipping  for 
Charleston  from  New  England  as  steward  or  cook,  will  be  pretty 
sure  to  let  the  people  on  shore  alone,  if  they  will  only  do  the  same 
kindness  to  him.  He  is  trembling  at  the  sight  of  his  own  shadow 
all  the  time  he  is  in  port.  He  hardly  gets  his  head  out  of  the 
camboose  for  a  glance  at  the  prospect,  or  a  fresh  gulp  of  air.  He 
sees  no  one  come  on  board  that  he  does  not  turn  blue  with  paleness 
lest  the  stranger  should  be  for  recognising  him  as  the  runaway  Tom 
or  Bill,  who  was  raised  by  Colonel  A.  or  the  Reverend  Mr.  B. 
somewhere  up  the  Santee  or  Edisto.  Let  him  keep  about  his  own 
business,  Carolinians,  and  depend  upon  it  he  will  not  meddle  with 
yours.  But  if  you  really  want  to  make  him  dangerous,  there  is 
one  effectual  way  to  do  it.  Go  on  board  the  ship  ;  order  him  over 
the  side  ;  row  him  on  shore  to  jail.  There  he  will  be  shut  up  with 
some  hundreds  of  his  own  color,  and  they  the  most  desperate 
characters  of  your  city  ;  for  of  course  it  was  not  sober  and  exem- 
plary behavior  that  brought  them  together  there.  He  will  have 
facilities  for  a  free,  unrestricted,  unwatched  communication  with 
them,  night  and  day,  such  as  no  other  place  in  Carolina  would 
afford.  If  he  is  an  abolitionist,  put  him  there,  and  if  he  does  not 
do  his  work  thoroughly,  he  is  a  fool.  If  he  is  an  abolitionist,  and 
has  any  enterprise,  you  may  chance  to  find  that  he  has  gone  among 

*  Letters  of  Mr.  Canning  and  Mr.  Addington  to  the  American  Secretary  of  State, 
Feb.  15th,  1823,  and  April  9th,  1824. 


48  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

you  for  the  very  purpose  of  taking  advantage  of  your  stupid  law, 
and  being  put  by  you  in  the  very  place  where  he  could  desire  to  be 
in  order  to  hatch  a  conspiracy.  The  wisdom  of  the  Southrons  (as, 
in  their  poetical  vein,  they  call  themselves)  is,  in  this  matter,  only 
equalled  by  their  courage.  Neither  would  be  the  worse  for  a  little 
self-collectedness  and  dignity. 

We  said  there  were  some  differences  between  the  cases  of  South 
Carolina  and  Sumatra.  Rigorously  as  our  government  saw  fit  to 
deal  with  Qualla  Battoo,  there  was  one  thing  about  the  matter  that 
rather  gravelled  some  of  the  more  scrupulous  civilians.  We  had 
no  treaty  with  that  amiable  people.  If  they  did  not  receive  us  to 
our  mind,  then,  what  breach  of  faith  had  we  to  punish  ?  But  with 
South  Carolina  Massachusetts  had  a  treaty.  It  is  written  in  the 
American  Constitution,  and  it  stipulates,  among  other  things,  that 
"  the  citizens  of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all  privileges  and  im- 
munities of  citizens  in  the  several  States."  The  people  in  question 
are  our  citizens.  They  were  made  so  by  the  Massachusetts  Con- 
stitution of  1780,  of  seven  years  earlier  date  than  the  Federal 
Constitution.  Massachusetts  never  could,  and  never  would,  have 
given  up  the  obligation  of  defending  them,  —  by  peaceable  or  by 
warlike  protection,  as  the  case  might  be.  In  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion she  resigned  the  right  to  fight  for  them  when  injured,  but  not 
without  demanding  and  receiving  what,  she  understood  to  be  full 
security  in  another  form,  and  what  would  have  been  full  security,  if 
the  most  bare-faced  perfidy  had  not  cancelled  it.  In  the  Federal 
Constitution,  she  entered  into  a  compact  of  perpetual  amity  with 
her  sister  States.  She  relinquished  her  right  to  "  keep  troops,  or 
ships  of  war  "  for  her  defence  against  them,  in  case  of  any  wrong, 
and  agreed  that,  instead,  she  and  they  would  submit  any  dispute 
that  might  arise,  to  a  common  peaceful  arbiter,  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  Union.  And  she  kept  her  own  pledge  sacredly,  as  became 
her. 

Mark  the  sequel.  She  receives  that  gross  wrong  at  the  hands  of 
a  sister  State,  which  no  community  has  endured,  that  has  a  name 
to  live  in  history.  Her  citizens,  without  offence  or  allegation  of 
any,  are  imprisoned,  whipped,  enslaved.  Mindful  of  her  faith  and 
honor,  —  with  all  the  right,  and  all  the  power  to  maintain  it,  — she 
seeks  only  peaceable  redress.  She  calmly  expostulates  with  the 
wrong-doer.  Her  remonstrances  are  thrown  back  with  insult.  She 
seeks  the  common  inoffensive  course  for  a  legal  remedy,  but  justice 
on  the  spot  is  stone  deaf  as  well  as  blind,  and  she  cannot  get  a 
hearing,  nor,  —  such  is  the  flagitious  despotism  of  the  public  mad- 
ness,—  so  much  as  an  advocate  to  tell  her  story.  Yet  she  must 
not  leave  any  amicable  means  untried.  She  sends  one  of  her 
honorable  citizens, — a  man  of  admirable  probity,  sobriety,  experi- 
ence, wisdom, —  not  to  retort  affront,  not  to  threaten  retaliation, 
not  to  exasperate  bad  and  foolish  passions  already  far  too  much  in- 
flamed, but  simply  to  go  to  laiv,  to  present  himself  in  the  Courts, 


OUTRAGES    ON    NORTHERN    VISITORS.  49 

where  it  had  been  dreamed  that  any  American  citizen  was  free  to 
go,  and  have  the  question,  whether  it  was  or  was  not  true,  as  South 
Carolina  alleged,  that  citizens  of  Massachusetts  might  lawfully  and 
rightfully  be  treated  as  they  had  been,  —  have  this  question,  we  say, 
quietly  adjudicated  by  the  authorized  ministers  of  that  Law,  which 
is  "  the  harmony  of  the  world,"  and  which  must  be  the  bond  of 
this  nation's  peace  and  union,  or  there  is  none. 

The  question  now  changes  its  phase.  It  is  no  longer  the 
whipping  and  selling  of  black  men.  It  is  the  expulsion,  or  worse, 
of  a  white  one,  and  he  a  man,  than  whom  a  more  worthy  or  hon- 
orable never  trod  that  unhappy  soil.  Carolina  flies  upon  him. 
The  Governor  cries  havoc  to  the  legislative  power.  The  Adjutant 
General  dashes  down  by  rail-road  from  Columbia,  with  military 
orders  in  his  pocket  sufficient  to  take  care  of  an  unarmed  Yankee. 
A  city  mob  threatens  his  life.  A  sheriff's  officer  assaults  him  in 
the  street.  A  company  of  Charleston  gentlemen,  and  a  procession 
of  coaches,  conduct  him  and  his  young  daughter  to  a  steam-boat 
about  to  depart.  The  vessel  is  seen  fairly  out  of  the  harbor,  and 
South  Carolina  breathes  freely  once  more ;  but  not  till  she  has 
passed  an  Act  in  five  Sections,  requiring  the  Governor,  Sheriffs  and 
other  magistrates  to  protect  her  for  the  future,  by  measures  of 
extreme  violence  and  indignity,  from  all  dangerous  persons  who 
may  think  to  go  to  law  within  her  borders  to  keep  honest  northern 
visitors  of  questionable  complexion  out  of  jails,  hand-cuff's,  and 
slave-markets. 

Why  amuse  ourselves  with  the  dream  of  the  compacts  or  the 
powers  of  the  Constitution  affording  us  any  protection  against  a  faith- 
less State,  when  things  like  these  are  done  ?  And  not  by  South 
Carolina  alone.  French,  rigadooning  Louisiana  (hear  it,  ye  stern 
shades  of  the  Pilgrims  !  )  imitated.  Cherokee-hunting  Georgia,  — 
repudiating  Mississippi, —  perhaps  other  States  of  equally  spotless 
fame,  —  by  set  resolutions  approved.  Justice,  humanity,  every  in- 
alienable prerogative  which  is  man's  by  human  birth-right,  had  been 
trampled  on.  The  last  remedy  of  States  had  been  defied,  in  the 
consciousness  of  that  impunity  which  the  pledges  of  the  injured 
party  insured.  The  compacts  of  the  Constitution  had  been  in- 
iquitously  violated.  It  is  not  we  that  say  so.  It  is  the  whole 
honest  world,  out  of  the  infected  region.  It  is  every  man  of  not 
perverted  mind,  who  has  wit  enough  to  read  its  simple  lines.  The 
only  one  of  South  Carolina's  own  sons,  before  whom  the  question 
ever  came  under  proper  official  responsibility,  said  so  in  as  emphatic 
terms  as  it  is  possible  for  any  of  us  to  use.* 

*  "On  the  unconslitutionality  of  the  law,  under  which  this  man  is  confined,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  it  will  not  bear  argument."  —  Opinion  of  Judge  Johnson, 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  Aug.  7th,  1893,  in  the  case  of  Henry 
Elkison  v.  Francis  Deliesseline,  Sheriff  of  Charleston  District.  The  indepen- 
dence asserted  hy  South  Carolina  of  any  jurisdiction  of  the  Federal  power  in  the 
matter,  is  another  point  of  resemblance  to  the  Sumatra  people.  "  That  part  of  the 

4 


50  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

What  then  ?  Violent  remedies  ?  Disunion  ?  Retaliation  ? 
Prisons,  stocks  and  lashes  for  South  Carolinian  travellers  whom  we 
may  lay  hands  upon  ?  Such  might  be  the  answers,  if  we  did  not 
live  in  the  peaceable  and  reasonable  nineteenth  century,  and  if 
Massachusetts  were  not  loyal  to  the  affronted  Constitution.  But 
no.  These  are  barbarous  expedients.  Away  with  the  thought  of 
any  such.  The  man  or  the  State,  that  has  right  on  its  side,  can 
afford  to  suffer  indignity  and  wrong.  They  can  afford  not  to  be  impa- 
tient for  redress.  There  is  one  thing  much  stronger  than  the 
fiercest  injustice ;  and  that  is,  the  omnipotence  of  a  righteous  cause. 
Because  there  is  a  Providence  above,  and  virtue  in  man,  and  a 
principle  of  good  in  affairs,  therefore  is  it  written  with  the  certainty 
of  fate,  that  violence  and  treachery  sow  the  seeds  of  reparation  and 
atonement.  Time  does  not  stop,  and  it  will  quickly  enough  do  its 
office  of  bringing  the  fruit  to  ripeness. 

Meanwhile,  as  to  our  question.  What  has  the  North  to  do  with 
the  Slave  Power  1  It  has  outrageously  maltreated  our  citizens.  It 
has  refused  us  a  peaceable  arbitration  of  differences.  We  thought, 
fought,  worked  and  prayed  hard,  to  get  a  Constitution  adequate  for 
the  protection  of  the  rights,  with  which,  as  we  understood  the  mat- 
ter, our  Maker  had  invested  us.  The  Slave  Power  has  broken  that 
Constitution  down.  Over  a  wide  region,  it  has  been  made  a  dead 
letter,  as  far  as  our  stipulated  benefits  from  it  are  concerned.  Have 
we  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  that  ? 


NO.  XVI. 

ITS    TYRANNY    OVER    THE    NON-SLAVEHOLDERS    OF  THE 

SOUTH. 

IN  a  few  preceding  papers  has  been  considered,  very  cursorily 
and  imperfectly,  the  impudent  oppression  exercised  over  us,  the  ten 
millions  of  people  of  the  (so  called)  Free  States,  by  the  oligarchy 
composed  of  the  one  hundred  thousand  slave-holding  voters.  But 
bad  as  our  case  is,  it  is  not  nearly  so  bad  as  that  of  their  five  mil- 
lion non-slave-holding  neighbors.  The  Slave  Power  administers 
both  governments  under  which  they  live ;  the  State,  as  well  as  the 
national.  For  us,  the  State  governments,  which  after  all  manage 
our  dearest  interests,  are  free  from  its  loathsome  and  withering  touch. 
For  them,  every  thing  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  usurpers.  Their  op- 
island  is  in  the  possession  of  the  natives,  who  owe  no  particular  allegiance  to  any 
foreign  power,  and  a  very  slight  one,  if  any,  to  the  King  of  Acheen,  who  does  not 
hold  himself  responsible  for  their  outrages.  *  *  *  *  *  Their  arrogance  and  treachery 
have  of  late  years  increased,  and  their  aggressions  were  countenanced  before  hand 
by  some  of  those  in  authority  [in  the  nation]."  Reynolds's  "  Voyage  of  the  Uni- 
ted States  Frigate  Potomac,"  p.  533. 


ITS    OPPRESSION    OF    SOUTHERN    NON-SLAVEHOLDERS.  51 

pression  is  far  the  most  extreme  and  pitiable.  They  are  not  permit- 
ted by  their  masters  even  to  know  its  baseness  and  ruin,  and  this  is 
even  the  worst  aggravation.  But  they  will  know  it.  They  belong 
to  our  party,  the  party  of  the  free  ;  and  they  will  be  found  voting 
by  our  side.  Theirs  are  the  deepest  wrongs,  and  from  their  awak- 
ened intelligence  will  come  at  length  an  effectual  deliverance. 

The  slave-holder  comprehends  this  perfectly  well,  and  that  is  the 
reason  why  he  is  so  determined  to  smother  the  freedom  of  speech 
and  of  the  press,  and  why  the  sacredness  of  the  post-office  is  in- 
vaded, that  no  matter  relating  to  human  rights  may  be  circulated 
through  it.  It  is  not  that  he  is  afraid  of  discussions  of  this  sub- 
ject for  the  slave.  The  slave  he  well  knows  (thanks  to  his  careful 
precautions !)  cannot  read  them.  To  the  slave  they  have  no  more 
meaning  than  so  much  unprinted  paper.  But  he  fears  them  for  his 
white  non-slaveholding  neighbors,  whom  he  has  to  oppress  in  op- 
pressing the  slave  ;  who  can  most  of  them  read  ;  and  who  have  the 
power  to  right  themselves,  when  they  come  to  comprehend  their 
wrongs.  It  is  the  conscience,  and  sense  of  justice,  and  feeling  of 
self  interest,  of  the  whites,  that  they  fear  lest  we  should  reach.* 

The  laboring  man  in  Massachusetts  has  every  reasonable  oppor- 
tunity for  improvement  and  advancement  that  money  could  buy,  or 
heart  desire.  Every  thing  there  is  in  him  has  its  fair  chance  to  come 
out.  Within  convenient  distance  of  his  dwelling,  is  a  school.  The 
public  keeps  the  best  schools  in  the  Commonwealth  ;  within  its  area 
of  some  7800  square  miles  there  are  four  or  five  thousand  ;  and  ev- 
ery child  has  a  legal  right  to  be  taught  in  them.  Within  two  or 
three  miles  of  every  man's  hearth  in  Massachusetts,  there  is  also  a 
small  select  library,  provided  at  the  public  charge.  Intelligence 
comes  with  all  this  ;  and  with  it  its  beautiful  train  of  order,  industry, 
economy,  thrift,  self-respect,  and  mutual  respect  and  kindness.  La- 
bor is  honorable  and  honored  in  all  its  forms,  and  its  social  position, 
without  any  official  advancement,  is  enough  for  a  reasonable  ambi- 
tion. There  is  not  an  honest  man  in  Massachusetts  who  is  out  of 
place  in  any  place  of  dignity  within  her  borders.  Every  prize  is 
free  to  merit.  Merit  has  a  fair  field.  God  gives  the  talent ;  the 
State  provides  the  opportunities ;  earnest  men  apply  the  industry ; 
and  the  result  constantly  before  our  eyes  is,  the  attainment,  from  the 
humblest  walks,  of  the  highest  elevation  and  the  most  brilliant  pros- 
perity. 

*  Something  like  this  said,  in  the  "United  States  Telegraph,"  Mr.  Duff  Green,  than 
whom  there  can  scarcely  be  a  better  authority  on  such  a  subject;  "  We  do  not  be- 
lieve that  the  abolitionists  intend,  nor  could  they,  if  they  would,  excite  the  slaves 
to  insurrection.  The  danger  of  this  is  remote.  We  believe  that  we  have  most  to  fear 
from  the  organized  action  upon  the  consciences  and  fears  of  the  slaveholders  them- 
selves ;  from  the  insinuation  of  their  dangerous  heresies  into  our  schools,  our  pulpits 
and  our  domestic  circles.  It  is  only  by  alarming  the  consciences  of  the  weak  and 
feeble,  and  diffusing,  among  our  people  a  morbid  sensibility,  on  the  question  of 
slavery,  that  the  abolitionists  can  accomplish  their  object."  Mr.  Green  understands 
this  matter  much  better  than  some  of  the  Northern  writers. 

4* 

UNIVERSITY  Of 


52  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

Turn  to  the  laboring  freeman  south  of  the  Potomac,  and  if  you 
care  nothing  about  slaves,  care  for  your  own  color.  Cock-pits,  bar- 
rooms, horse-racing  abroad  ;  —  squalidness,  filth,  scanty  fare,  shift- 
lessness,  at  home  ;  — a  pile  of  hewn  logs  to  live  in,  with  the  crev- 
ices stopped  with  mud,  and  a  shingle  chimney  ;  —  no  schools  for  the 
rude,  unkempt  children  ;  no  church  for  the  harassed  wife  ;  no  books 
by  a  comfortable  fire-side  ;  no  feeling  of  equality ;  no  dignity  of  man- 
hood ;  no  sense  of  consequence,  except  when  an  election  comes 
round,  and  he  goes  to  the  County  Seat,  to  be  treated  into  a  little 
more  brutality,  and  give  his  vote  for  one  or  the  other  of  the  slave- 
holding  candidates  that  band  their  forces  to  annoy  us  and  ruin  him. 
Of  course,  among  persons  so  situated,  there  are  those  who  overcome 
the  unpropitious  circumstances  of  their  position,  and  come  out  brave, 
intelligent,  self-respecting  men  notwithstanding.  But  they  will  be 
the  first  to  understand  that  they  have  not  had  fair  play,  and  that 
their  fellows  are  very  foully  used. 

Whose  fault  is  it  ?  Their  own  ?  Would  they  not  like  to  do 
better  ?  Would  they  not  like  to  change  their  condition  for  such  a 
one  as  that  of  the  industrious,  intelligent,  respected  heads  of  fami- 
lies in  our  towns  ?  Whose  fault  is  it  ?  Whose  but  that  of  their  slave- 
holding  neighbors,  who,  with  a  separate  interest,  take  the  power  into 
their  own  hands,  and  use  it  for  their  oppression  ;  who  could  not,  in 
such  a  state  of  society,  provide  the  means  of  popular  instruction,  if 
they  would  ;  who  would  not,  if  they  could,  because  they  could  then 
no  longer  make  the  same  profit  as  now,  of  the  supineness,  prejudi- 
ces, and  passions  of  ignorance  ;  and  who,  by  employing  a  kind  of 
labor  which  they  are  at  liberty  to  subject  to  all  sorts  of  hardships  and 
indignities,  —  whipping,  branding,  ironing,  and  selling  at  pleasure, 
—  constitute  an  idle  despotism  the  condition  of  honor,  confound  toil 
with  servitude,  and  make  industrious  usefulness  a  badge  of  dis- 
grace ?f 

Reader,  if  you  have  ever  been  in  the  South,  you  understand  the 
phrase,  mean  white  men,  originated  perhaps  by  the  negroes,  but 
in  use  among  their  betters.  It  does  not  stand  alone  for  slave- 
catchers  and  slave-sellers  by  trade,  degraded  and  brutified  libellers 
of  humanity,  whom  all,  masters  and  slaves  alike,  scorn  and  abhor. 
It  does  not  include  only  the  overseers,  coarse  ruffians  too  often,  har- 
dened and  irritated  by  their  equivocal  position,  and  wreaking  with 
undiscriminating  ferocity  their  vengeance  for  the  contempt  which 
they  are  conscious  always  attends  their  doubtful  delegated  power. 

*  It  is  amusing  to  advert  to  the  statistics  we  lately  presented  of  the  proportion 
of  persons  in  the  Slave  States  unable  to  read  and  write,  and  then  remember  the 
judicious  glorification  of  Chancellor  Harper,  of  South  Carolina:  "  It  is  by  the  ex- 
istence of  slavery,  exempting  so  large  a  portion  of  our  citizens  from  the  necessity 
of  bodily  labor,  that  we  have  leisure  for  intellectual  pursuits  "  —  (Southern  Literar}" 
Messenger  for  October,  1838.)  Probably  nothing  like  the  worst  is  recorded  in 
the  Census,  on  this  subject.  Governor  Campbell  of  Virginia  told  his  Legislature  in 
1838,  thit  it  appeared  from  the  returns  of  ninety-eight  clerks,  in  the  preceding  year, 
that  of  4614  applicants  for  marriage  licenses,  1047  men  could  not  write  their  names. 
Governor  Hammond,  of  South  Carolina,  told  his  Legislature  that  the  Common 
School  System  "is  not  suited  to  the  genius  of  our  people." 


ITS    OPPRESSION    OF    SOUTHERN    NON-SLAVEHOLDERS.  53 

A  mean  white  man,  in  a  slave  region,  means  every  man  who  does  not 
command  the  service  of  slaves.  The  masters  look  down  upon  him, 
and  the  slaves  scarcely  less.  He  is  nobody's  equal,  except  on  the 
eve  of  an  election.  He  is  nobody's  equal,  then,  any  further  than 
the  need  of  his  most  sweet  voice  enforces  an  affected  familiarity 
which  to  a  noble  mind  would  seem  more  offensive  than  insult. 
Small  farmers  working  with  their  own  hands  on  their  own  land, 
there  are  few  or  none.  The  culture  of  the  country  is  carried  on 
upon  extensive  estates,  with  machinery  requiring  large  investments. 
Day  labor  on  the  properties  of  other  men  is  not  to  be  had.  They 
would  not  consent  themselves  to  plough  and  hoe  in  the  same  furrows 
with  a  degraded  caste ;  and  if  they  would,  the  masters  do  not  want 
them.  Mechanics  there  are  few,  and  they  of  the  most  inferior  kinds. 
If  a  Louisiana  planter  wants  his  broken-down  coach  mended,  he 
must  ship  it  to  New  York.  A  mechanic,  hearing  of  the  scarcity  of 
industrious  and  capable  people  of  his  craft,  and  tempted  by  the 
prospect  of  high  wages,  comes  to  seek  his  fortune  in  such  a  region. 
Before  ten  or  five  years  have  passed,  he  has  probably  left  his  natu- 
ral and  proper  way  to  competency  and  standing,  and  passed  off  in 
one  or  the  other  of  two  directions.  He  has  either  invested  his  first 
earnings  in  three  or  four  negroes,  and  set  up  for  a  half-built,  shift- 
less gentleman,  or  has  broken  down  before  arriving  at  this  point,  and 
joined  the  ragged  company  of  loafers,  who,  because  they  are  free- 
men, are  too  good  to  work.  Or  if  he  must  do  something  to  live, 
but  cannot  rein  in  his  pride  to  work  were  there  are  rich  white  men 
and  poor  blacks  to  witness  his  dishonor,  he  has  taken  himself  and 
his  to  the  solitude  of  some  Chuzzlewit's  Garden  of  Eden, —  over- 
flowed a  good  part  of  the  year, —  and  there,  aguish  and  musquito- 
bitten,  with  his  boat  made  fast  to  his  door,  in  readiness  to  escape 
the  flood,  has  become  the  gaunt,  dismal  monarch  of  all  he  surveys, 
the  lonely  lord  of  an  acre  or  two  of  corn  and  some  poultry,  and  of  a 
wood-pile  for  the  supply  of  the  passing  steamboats,  which  keep  up 
his  communication  with  mankind,  and  find  him  in  pork  and  whiskey. 

No  community  can  be  prosperous,  where  honest  labor  is  not  hon- 
ored. No  society  can  be  rightly  constituted,  where  the  intellect  is 
not  fed.  Whatever  institution  reflects  discredit  on  industry,  what- 
ever institution  forbids  the  general  culture  of  the  understanding,  is 
palpably  hostile  to  individual  rights,  and  to  social  well-being. 

That  institution  in  the  South  is  Slavery.  There  are  four  classes 
of  persons  who  are  greatly  interested  for  its  overthrow  ;  1.  We  of 
the  North,  whom  through  its  political  action  it  has  shamefully  wrong- 
ed ;  2.  The  slave-holders  themselves,  as  in  due  time  we  propose  to 
show  ;  3.  The  non-slave-holders  of  the  South,  whom,  as  an  infe- 
rior caste,  it  condemns  to  degradation  and  imbecility ;  and  4.  The 
poor  negroes.  Of  these  four  classes,  the  Southern  non-slave-holders 
are  the  greatest  sufferers  from  it,  except  the  slaves.  Our  wrongs, 
though,  from  our  position,  we  may  have  more  perception  and  resent- 
ment of  them,  are  in  fact  inconsiderable  in  comparison. 


54  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


NO.  XVII. 

IT    EXISTS    BY    THE    SUFFERANCE    OF   THE    SOUTHERN 
NON-SLAVEHOLDERS. 

THE  Richmond  Whig  of  the  19th  of  August,  referring  to  the 
humble  labors  of  this  press,  expresses  the  *  opinion  that,  if  they 
"  should  be  sanctioned  by  the  Whig  party  of  the  North,  there  will 
not  be  long  a  Whig  party  at  the  South  at  all ; "  and,  "  if  ever  the 
Whigs  of  the  North  shall  surrender  themselves  to  their  guidance, 
they  may  rest  assured  that  the  party  ties  which  now  bind  us  to- 
gether will  be  forever  dissolved.  It  will  no  longer  be  a  war  of  par- 
ties, but  of  sections,  and  when  that  battle  is  to  be  fought,  the  South- 
ern Whigs  will  be  found  under  the  Southern  flag." 

Is  not  this  modest  ?  Who  constitute  that  Whig  party  of  the 
South,  which  is  to  be  annihilated  after  this  fashion  ?  Whig  slave- 
holders ?  Probably  they  make  less  than  one-seventh  part  of  it. 
There  are  about  one  hundred  thousand  slaveholding  voters  in  the 
whole  fourteen  Slave  States.  When  the  Whigs  manage  to  be  one- 
half  of  them,  which  is  not  very  often,  then  there  is  in  those  States 
an  aggregate  of  fifty  thousand  Whig  slave-holders'  votes.  Should 
what  the  Richmond  Whig  so  fearfully  deprecates  ever  come  to  pass, 
and  Whig  principles  at  the  North  be  fully  identified  with  free  prin- 
ciples, it  might  lead  to  this  enormous  loss  of  strength  in  the  national 
Whig  vote  of  a  million  and  a  half.  Why,  in  Massachusetts  alone 
we  have  not  far  from  fifty  thousa'nd  democratic  voters ;  but,  with  the 
blessing  of  Providence,  the  freemen  of  Massachusetts  alone  contrive 
to  keep  them  in  a  hopeless  minority. 

The  Richmond  editor  thinks  that,  when  the  Southern  Whig 
slave-holders  are  dissatisfied  by  an  adherence  to  Whig  principles  at 
the  North,  such  as  they  cannot  make  up  their  own  minds  to  imitate, 
they  will  be  able  to  swamp  the  Southern  Whig  party.  We  make  free 
to  tell  him,  that  herein  he  is  utterly  mistaken.  We  are  bold  to  say, 
that  never  did  partisan  wiseacre  make  a  falser  calculation.  Many 
of  the  Southern  (so  called)  Whigs  may  go  over  to  the  other  side  ; 
they  will  have  no  great  distance  to  travel; — but  in  the  mean- 
time will  have  sprung  up  a  large,  brave,  honest,  available  Whig 
party  in  that  region,  such  as  has  been  hitherto  unknown,  since 
slavery  began  to  practice  her  sorceries.  The  Southern  non-slave- 
holders belong  of  right  to  our  party,  —  the  party  of  the  free.  That 
is  their  natural  position,  and  they  are  on  their  way  to  find  it.  The 
same  abominable  power  which  annoys  us,  and  insults  humanity, 
grinds  them  in  the  dust ;  spurns  their  honorable  industry  ;  dashes 
the  bread  of  the  intellect  and  the  soul  from  their  lips.  They  are 
about  to  understand  this.  And  when  they  do,  the  Richmond 
Whig  will  find  out  by  convincing  tokens  whether  there  can  be  a 
Southern  Whig  party  after  the  North  has  come  to  be  true  to  itself. 


SOUTHERN    WHIG    PARTY.  55 

Many  of  the  Southern  Whig  party  are  as  little  satisfied  with  its 
former  leaders  as  we  at  the  North  with  some  of  ours,  and  for  the 
same  reason.  But  the  Southern  leaders  are  not  the  party,  and  a 
change  of "them  may  perchance  bring  something  very  different  from 
ruin. 

At  present,  it  is  only  in  an  exceedingly  qualified  sense,  that  there 
can  be  said  to  be  more  than  one  party  south  of  the  Potomac.  The 
sub-party  of  the  ins,  and  that  of  the  outs,  both  belong,  under  their 
present  leaders,  to  the  party  of  Slavery.  The  one  is  in  the  habit 
of  sustaining  better  men  than  the  other,  but  as  to  their  political 
principles,  and  their  action  on  great  measures,  —  Tros  Tyriusve, — 
Whig  or  Loco  Foco,  —  it  does  not  much  matter  which  you  call 
them.  In  respect  to  what  great  question  have  not  our  calculations 
on  Southern  Whig  aid  in  Congress  misled  and  bogged  us  ?  In  any 
pinch,  when  has  not  our  reliance  on  Southern  Whig  votes  proved  a 
broken  reed  ?  Enough  have  generally  remained  on  our  side  to  join 
in  our  wail  for  the  disappointment,  but  enough  have  generally  gone 
over,  —  were  more  or  fewer  wanted.  —  to  beat  us  in  the  vote.  Of 
what  earthly  use  to  any  cause,  measure,  party  or  thing,  that  calls 
itself  Whig,  are  such  Whigs  as  Mr.  Milliard  of  Alabama,  and  Mr. 
Jarnagin  of  Tennessee?  They  are  Hushais  in  our  Camp.  If 
skilled  in  any  thing,  it  is  "  to  perplex  and  dash  maturest  counsels." 
There  was  not  Whig  doctrine  enough  in  them  even  to  sustain  the 
Tariff  of  1842,  when  the  measure  hung  on  the  latter's  single  vote. 
No  matter  about  Mr.  Jarnagin,  in  particular.  If  he  had  not  been 
on  hand,  to  judge  from  past  experience,  the  business  would 
have  been'  as  effectually  done  by  some  other  similar  secession. 
When  did  a  cardinal  measure,  identified  in  the  popular  apprehen- 
sion with  a  triumph  of  the  Slave  Power,  fail  to  be  accomplished  by 
Southern  Whig  votes,  if  it  could  not  be  accomplished  without 
them  ?  Will  any  body  give  us  a  definition  of  a  Southern  Whig, 
applicable  to  the  year  1846  ?  Of  course,  it  must  be  broad  enough 
to  include  Mr.  Jarnagin,  of  Tennessee,  whose  vote  passed  Mr. 
Secretary  Walker's  anti-Tariff  bill,  and  Mr.  Berrien  of  Georgia,  of 
the  majority  of  the  Committee  that  brought  Texas  into  the  Union 
on  the  Pilgrim  Fore-fathers'  Day. 

Should  a  free  expression  of  the  principles  of  freemen  "be  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Whig  party  of  the  North,  there  will  not  be  long," 
thinks  the  Richmond  Whig,  "a  Whig  party  in  the  South  at  all." 
We  entertain  precisely  the  opposite  opinion.  We  conceive  that  as 
the  Whig  North  becomes  in  political  action  more  true  to  its  profes- 
sions, there  will  be  organized  at  the  same  time,  at  the  South,  a  far 
larger  party  of  true-hearted,  earnest,  substantial  Whig  patriots  than 
has  existed  since  the  time  of  Washington.  Just  so  far  as  we  have 
been  untrue  to  our  principles,  and  played  a  cowardly  game  into  the 
hands  of  slave-holders,  we  have  given  our  aid  to  keep  down,  in  ig- 
norance and  impotence,  that  vast  body  of  freemen  at  the  South, 
our  natural  allies,  and  establish  in  their  place  a  greedy  power,  alike 
hostile  to  us  and  them. 


50  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

Of  the  three  millions,  more  or  less,  of  voters  in  the  United 
States,  every  man  except  some  hundred  thousand,  is  interested  for? 
and  would  have  his  condition  materially  improved  by,  the  overthrow 
of  the  Slave  Power.  These  hundred  thousand  slaveholding  voters 
control  the  government  of  fourteen  States,  and  through  them  the 
government  of  the  Union.  And  yet  they  constitute  an  exceedingly 
small  minority,  not  only  as  compared  with  us,  the  freemen  of  the 
North,  or  with  the  negroes  whom  they  hold  in  bondage,  —  neither 
of  which  classes  can  legally  interfere  with  their  political  action  in 
their  States, —  but  also  as  compared  with  their  non-slaveholding 
fellow-citizens,  a  class  which  shares  with  them  the  political  fran- 
chise, and  which  suffers  far  more  from  their  despotic  mis-govern- 
ment than  any  other  class  except  the  wretched  negroes. 

In  1840,  a  census  was  taken  by  the  authority  of  the  Federal 
Government,  and  in  the  same  year  there  was  an  animated  Presiden- 
tial election,  which  drew  out  a  large  vote.  The  free  population  of 
the  Slave  States,  in  that  year,  according  to  the  enumeration,  was 
4,809,187.  In  the  same  year,  the  number  of  votes  for  Electors  of 
President  in  those  States  (with  the  exception  of  South  Carolina, 
which  did  not  choose  Electors  by  popular  vote,  but  by  the  Legisla- 
ture,) was  693,434.  Supposing  the  proportion  of  voters  to  free 
population  to  have  been  the  same  in  South  Carolina  as  in  the  other 
Slave  States,  her  voters,  in  a  free  population  of  267,350,  would 
have  been  40,820;  which  number,  added  to  the  693,434,  gives  an 
aggregate  of  734,254  Southern  voters.  Of  these,  about  100,000 
were  owners  of  slaves.  That  is,  in  the  Slave  States  themselves, 
the  non-slaveholding  exceeded  the  slaveholding  voters  in  the  pro- 
portion of  more  than  six  to  one. 

Now,  if  there  be  any  truth  whatever  in  the  view,  presented  in 
our  last  number,  of  the  depressed  and  oppressed  condition  of  free 
working  men  in  the  Slave  States,  such  vexations,  disabilities,  and 
wrongs,  along  with  such  power  to  redress  them,  are  not  going  to 
last  forever.  The  slaveholder  does  his  best  to  perpetuate  his  base- 
less and  precarious  rule.  He  knows  that  he  can  only  keep  his 
power  by  emasculating  the  non-slaveholding  freemen  around  him. 
He  blinds  and  he  stimulates  them.  He  will  give  no  schools  to  their 
children.  He  keeps  them  in  an  ignorance  which  would  make  it 
ridiculous  for  them  to  aspire  to  those  places  of  public  trust  in  which 
they  might  become  dangerous  to  his  views.*  He  plays  upon  their 

"According  to  the  census  of  1840,  the  "scholars  at  public  charge  "  in  the  Free 
States,  numbered  432,173;  in  the  Slave  States,  35,580.  Young  Ohio  had.  51,812, 
nearly  fifty  per  cent,  more  than  the  whole  of  them  ;  Kentucky,  429.  Virginia^  the 
largest  Slate,  had  9,791 ;  Rhode  Island,  the  smallest,  10,912. 

What  comes  of  this  want?  Poverty  of  spirit,  as  well  as  barrenness  of  mind. 
Governor  Metcalf,  of  Kentucky,  in  early  life  a  stone-mason,  afterwards  a  landed 
proprietor  and  slave-holder,  is  said  to  have  made  a  great  hit  for  popularity  by  an  act 
of  flattering  recognition  of  his  former  craft.  It  happened  that,  at  the  time  he  was 
canvassing  the  State,  the  great  Court  House  at  Louisville  was  building.  He  went 
into  the  yard,  and  hammered  some  stone,  and  carried  the  votes  of  the  masons  with 


SOUTHERN    WHIG    PARTY.  57 

sectional  prejudices,  and  inflames  the  coarse  unpatriotic  passions 
that  will  serve  his  ends.  Freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press 
among  them  might  soon  bring  them  to  an  intelligence,  and  to  con- 
clusions, too  threatening  to  his  objects ;  so  he  throws  dust  in  their 
eyes,  and  seduces  them  to  part  with  these  inestimable  blessings  of 
their  birth-right,  lest  an  insurrection  of  the  slaves  should  follow 
from  discussions  which  the  slaves  do  not  hear  and  cannot  read. 

But  the  spell  is  broken.  This  is  not  to  be  much  longer.  Brave 
men,  who  have  not  yet  learned  one-tenth  part  of  their  single  power, 
are  starting  up  in  the  slave  States,  to  stand  for  freedom,  and  the 
rights  of  their  much-injured  class.  Cassius  M.  Clay's  paper,  now 
transferred  to  hands  not  less  able,  and  more  true,  is  doing  a  great 
and  blessed  work  in  Kentucky.  It  is  now  passing  through  a  crisis, 
but  there  can  be  only  one  result.  The  slaveholders  have  conspired 
in  some  parts  of  the  State,  to  prevent  its  circulation.  But  they  had 
better  stop  where  they  are  ;  they  may  go  further,  and  fare  worse. 
The  hardy  working  men  have  got  fair  hold  of  it,  and  it  of  them  ; 
and  (thank  God  !)  it  is  now  a  death-grasp,  which  neither  guile  nor 
force  of  slaveholders  will  any  longer  be  able  to  loose.  The  same 
spirit  is  spreading  in  Western  Virginia  and  Eastern  Tennessee.  It 
is  kindled  in  North  Carolina.  Already  it  flames  broad  and  bright 
in  Maryland.  That  revolution  is  well  begun,  —  its  critical  period 
is  well  nigh  passed,  —  which  is  the  surest  of  all  never  to  go  back- 
ward. 

Some  States — Mississippi,  Alabama,  Texas  (if  Texas  be  a  State), 
— by  way  of  making  assurance  doubly  sure,  have  introduced  pro- 
visions into  their  Constitutions,  hampering  their  own  Legislatures  as 
to  the  power  of  dealing  with  this  subject.  But  it  will  not  all  do. 
Constitutions,  as  well  as  Legislatures,  are  the  creation  of  the  popu- 
lar will ;  and  when  free  Southern  working-men  get  their  eyes  open 
to  their  rights  and  wrongs,  Constitutions,  whenever  there  is  need, 
will  take  a  new  shape  accordingly.  Justice,  enthroned  in  the  pop- 
ular mind,  has  an  orderly  way  to  do  its  work  of  hamstringing 

a  rush.  The  incident  shows  the  self-respect  of  the  electors,  quite  as  little  as  the 
candidate's  good  taste. 

"  Tis  a  stupid  kind  of  cattle, 

Can  be  caught  with  mouldy  corn." 

Imagine  such  a  stage-play  to  be  enacted  in  Massachusetts,  by  any  of  her  noble  men 
who  have  risen  to  high  station  by  virtuous  industry.  Imagine  Samuel  Appleton 
handling  the  scythe,  or  Charles  Wells  the  trowel,  or  Samuel  T.  Armstrong  taking 
a  spell  at  the  printing  press,  or  William  Sturgis  at  the  capstan-spar,  to  help  an  elec- 
tion. Suppose  it  possible  they  should  think  of  the  thing, —  which  it  is  not, — who 
would  there  be  to  be  practised  upon  by  such  a  humbug?  What  would  they  get  for 
their  pains,  but  one  universal  guffaw  of  laughter?  "  Do  you  want  to  show  us  that 
you  think  there  is  nothing  discreditable  in  our  honest  trade,  to  put  us  below  such  a 
great  man  as  you  ?  We  never  thought  there  was  ;  and  if  you  suppose  we  did,  and 
that  your  condescending  lesson  on  that  subject  is  any  gratification  to  us,  you  are  too 
great  a  blockhead  for  us  to  vote  for."  That  would  be  the  substance  of  the  answer. 


58  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

abuses,  despite  all  the  artificial  defences  that  selfish  cunning  may 
have  donned. 

"  Stirrup,  steel-boot,  and  cuish  give  way 
Beneath  that  blow's  tremendous  sway." 

The  Southern  gentlemen  comprehend  this  quite  as  well  as  we  do. 
"  Ten  long  years  of  anxious  sorrow"  have  passed  since  Mr.  Nich- 
olas, in  the  Kentucky  Legislature,  opposed  the  calling  of  a  Conven- 
tion to  revise  the  Constitution,  because,  he  said,  the  question  of 
slavery  will  be  brought  up.  and  "  the  slaveholders  in  the  State  do 
not  stand  in  the  ratio  of  more  than  one  to  every  six  or  seven." 
Yes,  above  all  things  let  the  slaveholders  beware  of  popular  conven- 
tions for  revising  Constitutions.  Especially  let  such  a  measure  be 
eschewed  by  the  Richmond  Whig  and  its  compatriots ;  for,  when- 
ever there  is  a  popular  convention  in  Virginia,  there  will  be  a  new 
distribution  of  power  between  the  country  east  and  west  of  the  Blue 
Ridge,  and  after  that  is  done,  Virginia  slavery  may  fold  its  robes  and 
prepare  to  fall  with  decency. 

Meanwhile,  previously  to,  and  independently  of,  any  alteration  of 
the  organic  laws,  the  great  question  of  the  age  cannot  long  fail  to 
force  its  way  into  the  Southern  Legislatures.  With  a  majority  of 
more  than  a  half  a  million  of  votes  in  the  slave  country,  it  cannot 
be  that  the  injured  non-slaveholders  will  allow  themselves  always  to 
be  unheard.  In  some  districts,  the  disproportion  of  blacks  to  whites 
is  such  as  to  give  to  non-slaveholders  an  immense  majority,  and  an 
entirely  undisputed  control  at  elections  ;*  and  it  cannot  be  long  before 
such  districts,  at  least,  will  be  represented  by  persons  able  to  under- 
stand, and  to  stand  up  for,  the  rights  of  the  white  working-man.  The 
question  of  popular  education  is  already  raised  in  some  of  the  Slave 
States.  That  question  cannot  be  long  mooted,  before  the  low  con- 
dition,— rather  the  non-existence, — of  such  education,  will  be  traced 
to  its  cause.  That  cause,  that  essential,  omnipotent,  all-deadly 
cause, — is,  Slavery.  So  long  as  the  black  working  man  is  held  in 
bondage,  just  so  long  will  and  must  the  white  man  be  held  in 
miserable  darkness  and  bondage  of  the  mind.  The  momentous 
issue  will  soon  be  seen  to  be,  continued  and  increased  depression  oj 
the  non-slaveholding  freeman,  or  manumission  for  the  Slave. 

They  must  be  courageous  men  who  shall  first  proclaim  that  truth, 
in  the  face  of  the  over-bearing  will  and  marshalled  energy  of  the  Slave 
Power/)-  They  must  be  men  willing  to  risk  their  living  and  their  lives. 
But  there  are  brave  spirits  among  the  white  laborers  of  the  South,  that 
know  something  of  "  the  might  that  slumbers  in  a  peasant's  arm," 
and  in  what  are  better,  a  peasant's  mind,  soul,  pen  and  tongue. 

*  In  1840,  the  whites  were  to  the  slaves,  in  Seavey  county,  Arkansas,  as  311  to  1 ; 
in  Brook  county,  Virginia,  as  85  to  1 ;  in  Taney  county,  Missouri,  as  80  to  1 ;  in 
Morgan  county,  Kentucky,  as  74  to  1. 

t  "  Let  us  declare  through  the  public  journals  of  our  country,  that  the  question  of 
slavery  is  not,  and  shall  not,  be  open  to  discussion  ;  that  the  system  is  too  deep- 
rooted  among  us,  and  must  remain  forever ;  that  the  very  moment  any  private  indi- 


SOUTHERN    WHIG    PARTY.  59 

They  will  proclaim  the  truth.  They  cannot  be  stopped  from  doing 
it.  And  when  proclaimed  in  the  right  quarters,  it  will  be  widely 
recognised.  And  backed  by  a  peaceful  force  of  six  to  one,  the 
event  cannot  long  be  doubtful.  The  Richmond  Whig  need  be  un- 
der no  concern  about  the  submersion  of  the  Southern  Whig  party, 
on  account  of  any  greater  vitality  acquired  by  the  free  sentiments 
of  the  Whig  creed. 

If  this  way  of  thinking  of  ours  is  correct,  it  settles  agreeably  one 
or  two  questions. 

In  the  first  place,  what  the  Richmond  Whig  says,  that  there  "  will 
no  longer  be  a  war  of  parties,  but  of  sections,"  will  not  be  true,  but 
the  diametrical  opposite  of  truth.  The  free  men  of  both  South  and 
North,  who  place  their  point  of  honor  in  working  in  some  depart- 
ment, and  doing  something  useful  for  themselves,  their  families,  and 
their  day  and  generation,  will  have  a  sympathy  together,  and  a  mu- 
tual respect  which  has  never  yet  united  them.  The  tyrannous  dom- 
ination of  the  Slave  Power,  building  up  a  noxious  element  of  dis- 
content and  dissention  in  one  quarter, — this  it  is  that  has  made 
sectional  differences.  Take  that  away,  and  the  good  and  wise  in 
both  quarters  will  band  themselves  into  one  great  national  party  of 
the  Federal  Constitution,  and  bring  all  sections  and  all  interests  into 
harmony. 

In  the  second  place,  the  business  of  abolition  will  be  done  by  the 
proper  constitutional  hands.  When  the  vast  Southern  majority  of 
non-slaveholders  have  come  to  see  how  immensely  it  is  their  inter- 
est to  abolish  the  evil  that  crushes  out  their  moral  life-blood,  and 
how  irresistible  is  their  power  to  abolish  it,  the  thing  will  be  done, 
resolutely,  but  wisely  and  safely,  as  by  those  who,  from  personal 
experience,  know  thoroughly  the  exigencies  of  the  case,  and  have 
the  deepest  stake  in  a  quiet  and  prosperous  result.  It  will  be  done 
by  those  who  are  able  by  peaceable  voting  and  influence  to  coerce 
the  masters,  and  at  the  same  time,  if  need  be,  to  protect  them  by 
controlling  the  slaves.* 

If  we  may  give  a  word  of  counsel  to  the  masters,  it  shall  be  to 
point  out  in  what  quarter  lies  the  real  peril  cf  their  usurped  power. 
It  is  a  small  matter  to  silence,  disarm,  and  stultify  black  working 
men.  That  is  but  boys'  play.  If,  in  these  critical  times,  they  mean 
to  do  any  thing  to  the  purpose,  let  them  take  the  bull  by  the  horns, 
and  silence,  stultify,  and  banish  their  white  working  fellow-citizens. 
But  unless  we  err,  it  is  late  in  the  day  for  that  operation.  The  real 

vidual  attempts  to  lecture  us  upon  its  evils  and  immorality,  and  the  necessity  of  put- 
ting means  in  operation  to  secure  us  from  them,  in  the  same  moment  his  tongue 
shall  be  cut  out,  and  cast  upon  the  dunghill."  So  said  the  ''Columbia  (South  Caro- 
lina) Telescope."  The  echo  of  the  "Missouri  Argus"  was:  "Abolition  editors  in  the 
Slave  States  will  not  dare  to  avow  their  opinions.  It  will  be  instant  death  to  them." 
*  "There  is  only  one  proper  and  effectual  mode  by  which  it  [the  abolition  of  sla- 
very]  can  be  accomplished,  and  that  is  by  legislative  authority  ;  and  this,  as  far  as  my 
suffrage  will  go,  shall  never  be  wanting." — GEORGE  WASHINGTON.  See  letter  to 
Robert  Morris,  dated  12th  of  April,  17S6,  in  Sparks's  edition,  Vol.  IX,  page  159. 


THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


Southern  Whig   party  among  them,  is  in  a  fair  way  to  be  too  clear- 
headed and  strong  for  the  plan  to  be  thought  on. 


NO.  XVIII. 

WHO   WILL   BE   HARMED    BY   ITS    OVERTHROW  ? 

CERTAINLY  not  the  freemen  of  the  North.  Certainly  not  the  non- 
slaveholding  freemen  of  the  South.  Certainly  not  the  slaves.  And, 
as  certainly,  not  the  masters. 

The  highest  interest  of  every  man  is  his  own  character;  —  not  his 
reputation,  but  his  character.  ^Nothing  concerns  a  man  so  much  as 
to  avoid  doing  wrong.  I  can  encounter  no  calamity  so  great  as  that 
of  treating  my  brother  wickedly.  For  that  misfortune  nothing  can 
remunerate  me.  I  shall  do  well  to  escape  it  by  any  sacrifice. 

The  slaveholder's  life  is  a  life  of  utter  and  perpetual  injustice. 
The  worst  wrongs  to  which  men  are  subject  from  their  fellow  man, 
he  is  day  by  day  inflicting.  He  lives  on  their  unpaid  toil ;  he  shuts 
against  them  the  book  of  knowledge  ;  he  prevents  them  from  the  ex- 
ercise of  any  virtue,  except  honesty  and  patience ;  he  makes  their 
intercourse  together  that  of  brutes,  and  forbids  them  to  be  in  any 
reasonable  sense  of  the  words  husbands  and  wives,  parents  and  chil- 
dren ;  he  fills  their  lives  with  hopelessness  and  wo. 

He  is  sometimes  refined  and  humane,  you  say.  Very  well.  Then 
he  is  all  the  more  susceptible  of  these  considerations,  and  the  more 
incapable  of  sitting  down  with  an  easy  mind  so  long  as  the  institu- 
tion lives.  For  then  he  sees  the  more  clearly  its  essential,  inherent, 
ineradicable  enormities.  And  he  sees  that,  whatever  may  be  his 
own  disposition  to  mitigate  them,  one  of  the  very  evils  of  the  con- 
dition is  to  prevent  that  disposition  from  prevailing  to  any  great  ex- 
tent. He  sees  that  one  neighbor  is  avaricious,  or  intemperate,  or 
spiteful,  and  then  he  will  over-work,  and  half-clothe,  and  half-starve 
his  negroes,  or  lacerate  them  with  whips,  irons,  cat-hauling,  and 
other  tortures,  at  his  wicked  will ;  and  that  another  is  absent  or  in- 
dolent, and  turns  them  over  to  the  mercies  of  some  gross  savage, 
called  an  overseer ;  and  that  another  is  licentious,  and  then  wo  to 
the  living  chattels  of  his  domestic  sty.  He  considers  that  he  him- 
self is  to  die,  and  may  be  unfortunate  first,  and  then  what  may  be- 
come of  the  helpless  dependents,  whom  he  was  inclined  humanely 
to  care  for?  In  other  words,  what  sort  of  security  have  they  in  his 
individual  good  sense  and  good  will  ? 

And  he  reflects,  with  bitter  misgivings,  that  he  is  not  even  their 
master,  so  far  as  to  be  at  liberty  to  consult  his  own  kind  feelings  as 
to  the  amount  of  kindness  he  may  do  them.  The  stern  black  code 


POSITION    OF    THE    SLAVE    HOLDER.  61 

is  the  fierce  master,  to  which  he  is  himself  in  iron  bonds.  It  fastens 
its  fangs  upon  him  more  sharply  than  he  is  willing  to  do  upon  his 
blacks.  It  will  not  allow  him  to  allow  them  to  go  free.  It  will  not  al- 
low him  to  allow  them  to  learn  to  read.  It  will  not  allow  him  to  allow 
them  to  rise  from  being  male  and  female  beasts  to  be  men  and  women. 
It  represses  and  makes  penal  his  humanity,  while  it  annihilates  theirs. 
Talk  of  being  a  master,  indeed,  under  such  circumstances  !  Talk 
of  chivalrous  spirit  and  independence  !  Talk  of  even  such  dignity 
as  may  belong  to  despotism  !  Why,  the  veriest  wretch  in  a  rice 
ditch,  under  an  August  sun,  all  one  broil  and  fester  from  his  recent 
scoring,  is  not  so  abject  and  pitiable  a  slave  as  the  poor  creature 
whom  he  calls  his  master.  He  is  forced  to  sutler  wrong  in  plenty, 
but  not  to  do  it.  The  slavery  he  is  under,  says  to  him  perempto- 
rily, You  must  be  wretched  ;  but  it  does  not  say,  You  must  be  pi- 
tiless and  cruel.  That  intensest  degradation  and  slavery  is  re- 
served for  his  owner.  The  heaviest  tasked  and  most  insulted  slave 
in  our  slave  country  is  the  slave's  lord. 

There  are  men  in  the  slave  States,  —  slaveholders,  —  who  feel 
the  ineffable  degradation  of  this  position.  Not  only  conscientious 
men,  who  abhor  the  injustice,  but  spirited  men,  who  cannot  brook 
the  shame,  are  chafing  impatiently  under  the  yoke  they  wear,  felt 
by  them  to  be  heavier  and  more  dishonorable  than  that  which  they 
impose.  They  see  their  case  themselves,  and  how  ludicrously  it 
belies  that  large  prating,  in  the  Bobadil  vocabulary  of  honor,  in 
which  they  have  been  wont  to  indulge.  They  perceive  that  others 
see  their  case  also,  and  this  renders  them  yet  more  uneasy.  By  all 
civilized  communities  except  Brazil  and  the  Spanish  Colonies  (if 
they  be  strictly  within  that  pale)  slavery  and  slaveholders  are  com- 
ing more  and  more  to  be  treated  like  the  luke-warm  church  in  the 
third  chapter  of  the  Revelation  ;  even  the  Bey  of  Tunis  declines 
all  relations  with  them,  "  for  the  honor  of  humanity,  and  that  men 
may  be  distinguished  from  brutes."  Right-minded  persons  of  their 
number  are  distressed  by  this  the  more,  in  proportion  as  they  see 
cause  to  acknowledge  the  justice  of  the  sentence.  Proud  men, 
right-minded  or  not,  cannot  put  it  by  with  any  affected  unconcern. 
The  sense  of  civilized  and  Christian  man  is  as  all-pervading  as  grav- 
itation. Augur  may  keep  augur  in  countenance  a  little  while,  and 
so  may  slave-holder  slave-holder.  But  the  consciousness  of  a  false 
position  is  a  perpetual  distress.  Monstrari  digito,  to  be  marked  in 
other  circles  for  an  odious  peculiarity,  is  just  the  more  vexatious  and 
intolerable,  in  proportion  to  the  vaunts  of  consequence,  and  claims 
to  observance,  to  which  the  party  has  been  used.  Many  a  slave- 
holder is  sensitive  to  the  discredit,  who  is  not  properly  apprehensive 
of  the  wrong,  and  would  be  but  too  happy  to  take  a  fair  place  in 
the  creditable  world,  cleansed  from  the  nastily  adhesive  stigma. 

After  a  man's  own  character,  his  next  most  anxious  considera- 
tions are  for  his  family.  What  a  lot,  for  a  reflecting  parent  to 
think  of,  to  be  obliged,  by  the  necessity  of  the  social  system  about 


62  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

him,  to  bring  up  children  in  idleness,  and  contempt  for  useful  em- 
ployment, in  the  culture  and  exercise  of  the  most  boisterous  passions, 
and  exposed  to  the  infinite  bad  example  and  temptation  belonging 
to  a  household  served  by  slaves  !  Read  the  lesson  of  the  sagacious 
and  experienced  slave-holder,  Jefferson,  on  this  subject,  recorded  at 
a  time  when  the  evil  was  vastly  less  appalling,  because  less  self- 
developed  and  less  actively  all-penetrating  than  at  the  present  day. 
u  The  child  *  *  *  *  nursed,  educated,  and  daily  exercised 
in  tyranny,  cannot  but  be  stamped  by  it  with  odious  peculiarities. 
The  man  must  be  a  prodigy  who  can  retain  his  manners  and  morals 
undepraved  by  such  circumstances." 

Mr.  Jefferson's  abrogation  of  the  Law  of  Primogeniture  has 
scarcely  begun  to  do  its  work  till  this  generation.  It  and  Slavery 
are  now  working  together  in  Virginia.  A  family  is  brought  up,  waited 
upon  by  slaves,  and  enervated  and  vitiated  by  intercourse  with 
them,  —  the  slave  boys  for  their  companions,  and  the  slave  girls 
constantly  in  their  way,  and  altogether  too  much  at  their  mercy. 
By  and  by  the  father  dies,  and  the  land  and  the  hundred  negroes, 
more  or  less,  are  divided  equally  among  the  children.  The  sons 
cannot  live,  —  at  all  events,  as  they  have  been  used  to  living.  —  on 
a  piece  of  exhausted  tobacco  land,  with  a  dozen  or  two  of  hands  to 
till  it.  The  professions  are  full ;  the  trades  are  too  vulgar  for  them  ; 
they  have  no  way  to  get  a  subsistence.  They  sell  off  the  human 
stock  to  Mississippi,  Alabama,  or  Texas,  and  live  on  the  proceeds 
as  long  as  they  last,  and  then  become  borrowing  loafers  about  the 
Court  House  tavern,  or  take  their  departure  for  parts  unknown. 
Or  they  carry  to  the  Capitol  their  only  capital,  long  so  well  accredit- 
ed there,  of  "  belonging  to  one  of  the  first  families  in  Virginia," 
get  some  small  clerkship  in  some  of  the  public  offices,  dress,  drink, 
drab,  and  play  to  the  limit  of  their  slender  salary,  and  so  come  to 
the 

"last  scene  of  all 

That  shuts  this  strange  eventful  history, 
In  second  childishness,  and  mere  oblivion." 

There  are  estimable  youth  in  the  slave-holding  families  of  that 
region,  that  take  neither  of  these  courses,  nor  any  thing  like  them. 
But  the  tendency  of  the  deplorably  vicious  social  system  to  multiply 
such  histories,  is  too  strong  for  a  right-minded  parent  to  contemplate 
without  bitter  anxiety. 

In  fact,  there  is  many  an  anxious  heart  of  fathers  and  mothers  in 
in  slave-holders'  dwellings,  daily  and  nightly  brooding  over  these 
evils ;  and  greatly  welcome  will  be  the  relief  to  many  a  troubled 
breast,  when  the  time  comes  for  children  to  be  bred  in  industry,  and 
in  exemption  from  corrupting  domestic  influences,  and  when  "  the 
freeman,  whom  the  truth  makes  free,"  can  say,  Poor  or  rich,  what 
I  have  is  my  own,  the  earning  of  my  mind  or  my  hands  :  the  bread 


UNEASINESS    OF    THE    SLAVE    COUNTRY.  63 

I  and  mine  eat,  whether  in  plenty  or  penury,  is  not  the  bread  of 
violence.  No  tears  and  blood  of  wretched  vassals,  leaven  and 
sour  it.  No  scarred,  fettered,  and  imbruted  image  of  God  dragged 
itself  forlorn  along  the  furrow  that  bore  it  to  me.  Then 

"  He  can  look  the  whole  world  in  the  face, 
For  he  owes  not  any  man." 

Now  he  owes  every  man,  woman,  and  child  whom  the  God-affronting 
law  calls  his  own,  and  owes  them  far  more  for  their  wrongs  and  sor- 
rows than  Spanish  mines  could  pay.  To  be  delivered  from  the 
necessity  of  running  any  further  in  such  a  debt,  will  be  an  unspeak- 
ably joyous  emancipation,  to  many  a  spirit  that  now  muses  and  sighs 
in  secret. 


NO.  XIX. 

WHO  WILL  BE  HARMED  BY  ITS  OVERTHOW?  — PRUDENTIAL 
CONSIDERATIONS  FOR  THE  SLAVE  HOLDER. 

A  SLAVEHOLDING  community  lives  in  perpetual  uneasiness  and 
alarm.  The  master's  house  on  a  plantation  is  a  little  citadel,  armed 
in  preparation  for  the  worst.  The  negroes  must  not  meet  in  assem- 
blies for  religious  purposes,  except  under  strict  restraints.  They 
must  not  leave  the  estate  where  they  belong,  without  a  pass.  In  the 
cities,  the  drums  beat  at  nine  o'clock  ;  the  guards  take  their  stations  ; 
and  the  blacks  must  house  themselves  for  the  night.  In  the  midst 
of  Charleston,  is  a  sort  of  castellated  building,  provided  for  a  place 
of  refuge  to  the  inhabitants  in  case  of  an  outbreak.  Every  thing 
betokens  a  never-sleeping  vigilance  against  apprehended  assaults 
from  a  desperate  domestic  enemy. 

What  comfort  can  there  be  in  living  so?  It  would  be  disagreea- 
ble enough  to  be  always  on  the-look  out  for  an  invasion  from  abroad  ; 
but  to  pass  life  in  continual  apprehension  of  murderous  foes  in  one's 
kitchen,  hall,  and  bed-chamber,  is  incomparably  a  more  unenviable 
lot.  "  A  state  of  military  preparation"  said  Governor  Hayne,  to 
the  South  Carolina  Legislature,  in  1833,  "  must  always  be  with  us 
a  state  of  perfect  domestic  security.  A  profound  peace,  and  conse- 
quent apathy,  may  expose  us  to  the  danger  of  domestic  insurrection." 
"  We  of  the  South,"  says  the  Maysville Intelligencer,  "are emphati- 
cally surrounded  by  a  dangerous  class  of  beings, — degraded  and 
stupid  savages,  who,  if  they  could  but  once  entertain  the  idea  that 


64  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

immediate   and  unconditional    death  would    not  be  their  portion, 
would  re-enact  the  St.  Domingo  tragedy." 

Bad  as  the  case  is  already,  it  is  in  some  quarters  becoming  con- 
stantly worse.  In  1790,  the  slaves  were,  in  South  Carolina,  about 
two-fifths  of  the  population  ;  and  in  North  Carolina,  about  one 
quarter.  In  1840,  they  were  in  South  Carolina  far  more  than  half, 
and  in  North  Carolina  nearly  one-third ;  while  in  Mississippi  they 
have  increased  from  three-eights  of  the  population  in  1800  to  more 
than  half  in  1840.  The  annual  increase  of  slaves  in  the  whole 
country  is  estimated  at  from  seventy-five  to  eighty  thousand,  equal 
to  one  tenth  part  of  the  population  of  Massachusetts.  If  the  dan- 
ger is  already  great  from  such  a  host  of  domestic  enemies,  what  is 
time  doing  with  it? 

Yet  so  marvellously  Boeotian,  so  fatly  stupid  is  the  infatuation  on 
this  subject,  that  you  hear  sensible  people  talk  as  if  there  would  be 
danger  in  unlocking  the  fetters  of  these  millions  of  victims,  while  the 
course  of  safety  is  in  holding  them  in  continued  bondage  by  all  the 
means  of  outrageous  violence  necessary  to  effect  that  object.  As  if, 
on  any  known  principles  of  human  nature,  such  a  multitude  could 
never  be  provoked  to  resistance  and  vengeance  as  long  as  you  treat- 
ed them  grossly  ill,  but  the  moment  you  did  them  justice,  and  con- 
ferred upon  them  the  boon  of  all  blessings  that  the  heart  of  man 
most  longs  to  possess,  that  moment  they  would  turn  upon  you,  and 
make  you  and  yours  the  victims  of  their  unpitying  rage. 

Whether,  and  how  far,  the  throwing  off  of  this  intolerable  load 
may  involve  sacrifices  of  property,  are  questions  which  may  be  con- 
sidered hereafter.  But  it  will  involve  no  sacrifices  of  peace  and 
personal  safety.  That  is  all  a  craven  and  senseless  alarm.  The 
whites  in  the  fourteen  Slave  States  are  more  numerous  than  the 
slaves  in  the  proportion  of  five  to  three,  if  that  were  the  only  con- 
sideration ;  and  in  only  two  of  those  States,  South  Carolina  and 
Mississippi,  do  the  blacks  constitute  the  majority  of  the  population. 
Most  of  the  Slave  country  is  flat,  affording  no  advantage  of  position 
to  counterbalance  that  of  numbers.  But  the  decisive  consideration 
is,  the  superior  intelligence,  organization,  and  resources  of  the  whites, 
affording  them  perfect  security  even  against  greatly  superior  num- 
bers. As  long  as  the  provocations  of  slavery  continue,  there  may 
be  hazard  of  passionate  and  desperate  insurrections,  which  may  do 
much  mischief  before  they  are  suppressed.  But  no  motive,  short  of 
the  fury  of  anger  and  despair,  could  be  sufficient  to  marshal  an  op- 
position to  the  concentrated  and  disciplined  power  of  the  white 
people  ;  and  the  possibility  of  any  impulse  of  that  sort  would  be 
done  away,  as  soon  as  the  boon  of  liberty,  — all  that  it  would  aim 
at,  — had  been  freely  bestowed. 

But  what  seems  matter  of  such  easy  demonstration  has  been  at 
length  proved  in  the  experiment,  and  so  well  that  it  is  now  no  better 
than  impertinence  to  hold  the  opposite  argument.  On  the  one  day 


SAFETY    OF    EMANCIPATION.  65 

of  August  1st,  1834,  eight  hundred  thousand  slaves  were  set  free 
in  nineteen  English  colonies  of  the  West  Indies.  Many  of  their 
masters  had  affected  to  portend  all  the  horrors  that  the  fancies  of 
American  masters  picture  at  the  present  time.  Nothing  short  of 
sweeping  in  a  flood  of  havoc  over  the  islands,  burning  the  planta- 
tions, and  carrying  murder  and  nameless  outrages  into  every  dwell- 
ing, it  was  said,  would  suffice  to  surfeit  the  hoarded  vengeance  of 
years.  But  not  an  act  of  violence  stained  that  magnificent  triumph 
of  Christianity  and  freedom.  Universally  the  hearts  of  the  poor 
emancipated  creatures  were  big  with  gratitude,  not  with  fury.  Di- 
lated with  love  for  the  partners,  children,  and  homes  they  might 
henceforward  call  their  own,  their  bosoms  had  no  room  for  hatred 
of  the  oppressor  whose  rod  was  now  broken  ;  and  from  that  day  to 
this,  twelve  years,  there  has  been  no  insurrection  or  violence  of 
the  laborers,  but  on  the  contrary,  a  peaceable  and  orderly  condition 
of  things  which  would  do  honor  to  any  civilized  community. 

The  experiment  in  the  British  West  Indies  was  made  under  no 
peculiarly  favorable  circumstances.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  island  of 
Jamaica,  in  particular,  which  contained  half  the  slaves,  some  of  the 
circumstances  were  as  unpropitiousas  could  well  be.  Four  hundred 
thousand  blacks  against  forty  thousand  Europeans,  the  latter  would 
have  been  but  a  mouthful  for  their  vindictive  appetite.  The  chain 
of  high  mountains,  which  runs  through  the  centre  of  the  island, 
offers  fastnesses  which  would  have  fully  compensated  to  insurgents 
any  want  of  military  skill.  Nor  had  unnecessary  provocation  been 
wanting.  The  ill-advised  planters  of  Jamaica  had  done  all  in  their 
power  to  resist  and  thwart  the  generous  policy  of  the  mother  gov- 
ernment. Nothing  had  been  done  by  them  to  conciliate  their  bond- 
men against  the  critical  day  of  liberty,  but  the  reverse.  It  was 
hardly  possible  to  submit  to  an  unwelcome  necessity  with  a  worse 
grace.  To  the  last  hour  they  did  much  of  what  was  in  their  power  to 
tempt  vengeance,  but  they  did  it  all  in  vain. 

Whether  there  is  danger  in  the  present  state  of  things  in  our 
Slave  States,  let  all  judge  who  know  the  facts.  It  is  a  subject  we 
cannot  bear  to  pursue.  But  in  the  process  of  emancipation  there 
is  no  danger.  That  is  a  certain  course  of  safety,  for  the  present 
and  the  future. 


66  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


NO.  XX. 

WHO  WILL  BE  HARMED  BY  ITS  OVERTHROW  ?— ECONOMICAL 
CONSIDERATIONS  FOR  THE  SLAVEHOLDER. 

MR.  CLAY  said,  in  a  famous  speech,  that  the  value  of  slaves  in  the 
Union  was  twelve  hundred  millions  of  dollars;  and  how,  he  asked, 
could  it  be  expected  that  the  South  would  ever  consent  to  sacrifice 
that  vast  amount  of  property  by  emancipation? 

We  hold  this  view  to  be  demonstrably  and  utterly  false.  More ; 
we  hold  that  emancipation  would  be  a  good  economical  operation. 

1.  Why  is  a  slave  of  any  value  ?     He  is  good  for  nothing,  merely 
as  a  slave.     His  bones  and  muscles  are  worthless  to  you,  indepen- 
dently of  the  use  you  can  put  them  to.     He  is  of  value,  because  he 
is  a  machine  for  raising  sugar,  tobacco,  rice,  or  cotton.     His  value 
represents  the  net  proceeds  of  his  labor,  —  neither  more  nor  less. 

2.  "  But  we  get  his  labor  without  wages."     No,  you  do  not. 
You  do  not  call  what  you  pay  him  wages.     But  you  pay  him,  in 
kind,  food  and  clothing  for  himself  and  his  family,  which  food  and 
clothing  hired  laborers  use  their  wages  to  buy.     We  find  the  aver- 
age cost  of  supporting  slaves  rated  at  a  dollar  a  week,  or  fifty  dol- 
lars a  year.     That  estimate  is  probably  too  high,  but  the  amount  is 
of  no  consequence  to  our  argument.     At  all  events,  you  give  him 
something,  to  keep  him  alive  and  in  working  condition.     You  have 
to  give  him  something ;  else  he  would  die ;  and  there  would  be  the 
end  of  your  property  in  him. 

3.  It  is  ruinous  economy  to  give  small  pay  for  the  grudged  and 
clumsy  labor  of  a  slave,  instead  of  giving  larger  for  the  cheerful  and 
intelligent  labor  of  a  freeman.     We  of  the  North,  who  have  the 
credit  of  knowing  about  these  things  as  well  as  most  people,  under- 
stand perfectly  well  that  we  cannot  afford  to  pay  low  wages.     Low 
wages  buy  only  unskilful  service.     A  farm,  or  a  factory,  or  a  shop, 
involves  an  investment  of  capital.     It  does  not  answer  for  us  to  have 
the  interest  running  on,  without  employing  the  best  kind  of  labor 
we  can  procure,  so  as  to  get  back  the  best  return.     Good  labor 
costs  more  money  ;  but  to  pay  it,  we  find  to  be  the  only  good  thrift. 
We  cannot  afford  to  have  every  thing  continually  getting  out  of  or- 
der, for  want  of  skill,  economy,  forethought,  and  management  in  the 
operatives.     We  cannot  afford  to  have  the  master  constantly  har- 
assed and  taken  off  to  patch  up  his  workmen's  shiftless  work,  and 
keep  them  at  their  business.     At  Lowell,  where  there  is  seen  the 
perfection  of  plan  and  method,  they  will  scarcely  look  at  a  Man- 
chester operative,  whom  they  can  have  for  little  more  than  enough 
to  keep  him  alive.     Nothing  will  suit  them  short  of  the  well-trained 
people  from  our  common  schools,  to  whom  they  must  allow  a  com- 
pensation sufficient  to  give  them  lessons  in  French  and  music,  be- 


VALUE  OF  THE  INVESTMENT  IN  SLAVES.  67 

sides  making  deposits  in  the  Savings  Bank ;  and  the  highest  paid 
labor  is  the  most  profitable  to  the  employers.  The  same  principles 
apply  to  the  management  of  a  plantation,  if  their  owners  would  but 
see  it.  If  they  mean  to  keep  rich,  and  grow  richer,  they  will  do 
well  to  take  a  leaf  out  of  our  book. 

4.  What  are  the  cotton  and  sugar  estates  good  for,  except  for 
what  they  will  produce  ?  Of  course,  the  value  of  their  product  is 
the  measure  of  their  own  value.  As  long  as,  from  the  existing  sys- 
tem, they  are  doomed  to  be  tilled  by  lazy  and  awkward  hands,  kept 
in  motion  by  nothing  but  fear  of  the  lash,  their  value  is  kept  down. 
Give  them  a  better  tillage,  as  you  will  when  you  place  upon  them 
laborers  excited  to  do  their  best  by  a  sense  of  direct  personal  inter- 
est, and  their  value  immediately  rises  in  proportion  to  the  increased 
amount  and  value  of  the  production  ;  and  the  proprietor  is  more  than 
compensated  for  his  increased  outlay  upon  labor  by  the  advance  in 
the  income  and  appraisement  of  his  real  estate.  Unless  we  are  as 
blind  as  moles,  not  a  dollar  of  property  would  be  lost  in  the  South 
by  the  abandonment  of  its  nominal  ownership  of  twelve  hundred 
millions  of  dollars  in  slaves.  On  the  contrary,  the  rise  of  other 
property,  consequent  upon  that  step,  and  impossible  without  it, 
would  more  than  make  good  the  supposed  deficit. 

Let  us  illustrate  by  a  story,  which  we  find  in  a  "  Cincinnati  Ga- 
zette," of  March,  1843,  of  a  proceeding  of  Mr.  McDonough  of  Lou- 
isiana, with  a  portion  of  his  slaves.  We  have  conversed  with  Mr. 
McDonough,  and  learned  some  further  particulars.  But  those  which 
are  recorded  are  sufficient  for  our  purpose. 

"  In  1842,  Mr.  McDonough,  residing-  opposite  New  Orleans,  liberated  80  slaves 
and  sent  them  to  Liberia.  The  history  of  this  event  is  thus  related  by  himself: 

"  Feeling  the  necessity  of  keeping  the  Sabbath  holy,  he  would  not  allow  his 
slaves  to  work  on  that  day.  Experience,  however,  soon  convinced  him  that  men 
who  toiled  six  days  for  their  master  needed  many  things  which  he  could  not  give 
them.  To  enable  them  to  do  this,  he  allowed  them  half  of  Saturday,  that  is,  from 
midday  till  night,  to  work  for  themselves. 

"Seeing  the  amount  of  money  the  slaves  accumulated  in  this  way,  he  was  led 
to  calculate  how  long  it  would  take  them  to  purchase  the  remaining  five  and  a  half 
days.  The  result  proved  that  it  could  be  done  in  14  or  15  years,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  make  the  experiment.  For  this  end  he  called  his  slaves  together,  and 
explained  to  them  his  plan,  and  said,  with  their  assent  he  would  carry  it  out. 
They  assented,  (this  was  in  1826),  and  he  made  the  following  explanation: 

"  The  one-half  of  Saturday  being  already  your  own,  (in  consequence  of  my 
agreement  with  you  that  no  labor  shall  be  done  on  the  Sabbath  day,)  your  first 
object  will  be  to  gain  a  sufficient  sum  of  money  to  purchase  the  other  half  of  Sat- 
urday, which  is  one-eleventh  part  of  the  time  you  have  to  labor  for  your  master, 
and  of  consequence,  the  one-eleventh  part  of  the  value  your  master  has  put  upon 
you,  and  which  you  have  to  pay  him  for  your  freedom.  [This,  I  notify  you,  will 
be  the  most  difficult  part  of  your  undertaking,  and  take  the  longest  time  to  accom- 
plish.] It  is  to  be  effected  by  laboring  for  me  on  Saturday  afternoons,  and  leav- 
ing the  amount  of  your  labor  in  my  hands  to  be  husbanded  up  for  you.  By  fore- 
going every  thing  yourselves,  and  drawing  as  little  money  as  possible  out  of  my 
hands,  I  calculate  you  will  be  able  to  accomplish  it  in  about  seven  years ;  that 
once  accomplished,  and  one  day  out  of  six  your  own,  you  will  go  on  more  easily 
and  rapidly;  indeed,  that  once  effected,  your  success  is  certain;  proceeding  then 

5* 


68  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

on  in  your  good  work,  you  will  be  enabled  easily,  by  your  earnings  on  one  entire 
day  in  each  week,  to  effect  the  purchase  of  another  day  of  your  time,  in  about  four 
years.  Now  master  and  owner  of  two  days  in  cacli  week,  you  will  be  able  in  two 
years  more  to  purchase  another  day,  so  that  three  days,  or  one-half  of  your  time, 
will  be  your  own ;  in  one  and  a  half  years  more  you  will  be  able  to  purchase  an- 
other day,  making  four  days  your  own ;  in  one  year  more,  another,  or  the  fifth 
day ;  and  in  six  months,  the  last  day,  or  the  whole  of  your  time,  will  be  your  own. 
"The  results  of  the  experiments  were  these.  In  less  than  six  years,  the  first 
half  day  was  gained  and  paid  for  by  them.  In  about  the  next  four  years  the  second 
day  of  the  week  was  paid  for  and  their  own.  In  about  two  and  a  quarter  years, 
the  third.  In  fifteen  months,  the  fourth.  In  a  year,  the  fifth.  And  in  about  six 
months  the  last,  or  sixth  day  became  their  own,  and  completed  the  purchase, 
effecting  their  freedom  in  about  fourteen  and  a  half  years.  It  could  have  been 
sooner  done,  but  towards  the  last  they  drew  more  money.  After  this  it  took  them 
naarly  five  months  to  pay  the  balance  due  on  their  children,  added  to  what  the 
youths  (boys  and  girls)  had  earned.  On  the  morning  of  the  8th  of  June,  1842, 

they  all  sailed  for  Liberia." 

######### 

Mr.  McD.  calculated,  "that  their  labor  would  be  given  with  all  the  energy  of 
heart,  soul  and  physical  powers,  that  they  would  in  consequence  accomplish  more 
labor  in  a  given  time,  than  the  same  number  of  persons  would  in  ordinary  circum- 
stances, and  that  in  addition,  they  would  labor  some  two,  three  or  four  hours  more 
of  the  twenty -four,  than  other  slaves  were  in  the  habit  of  doing  or  would  do,"  and 
he  says : 

"From  the  day  on  which  I  made  the  agreement  with  them,  (notwithstanding 
they  had,  at  all  times  previous  thereto, 'been  a  well-disposed  and  orderly  people,) 
an  entire  change  appeared  to  come  over  them ;  they  were  no  longer  apparently 
the  same  people ;  a  sedateness,  a  care,  an  economy,  an  industry,  took  possession 
of  them,  to  which  there  seemed  to  be  no  bounds  but  in  their  physical  strength. 
They  were  never  tired  of  laboring,  and  seemed  as  though  they  could  never  effect 
enough.  They  became  temperate,  moral,  religious,  setting  an  example  of  inno- 
cent, unoffending  lives  to  the  world  around  them,  which  was  seen  and  admired  by 
all.  The  result  of  my  experiment  in  a  pecuniary  point  of  view,  as  relates  to  my- 
self, is  not  one  of  the  least  surprising  of  its  features,  and  is  this,  that  in  the  space 
of  about  sixteen  years,  which  those  people  served  me,  since  making  the  agree- 
ment with  them,  they  have  gained  for  me,  in  addition  to  having  performed  more 
and  better  labor  than  slaves  ordinarily  perform,  in  the  usual  time  of  laboring,  a 
sum  of  money  (including  the  sum  they  appear  to  have  paid  me,  in  the  purchase  of 
their  time,)  which  will  enable  me  to  go  to  Virginia  or  Carolina,  and  purchase  a 
gang  of  people,  of  nearly  double  the  number  of  those  I  have  sent  away.  This  I 
state  from  an  account  kept  by  me,  showing  the  amount  and  nature  of  their  extra 
work  and  labor,  which  I  am  ready  to  attest  to,  in  the  most  solemn  manner,  at  any 
time." 

But  men  standing  up  as  they,  active,  brisk  in  look  and  walk,  showing  vigor, 
attracted  a  good  deal  of  attention.  Mr.  McD.  relates  the  following  anecdote 
illustrating  this  point: 

His  head  brick-layer  Jim,  attracted  the  attention  of  a  Mr.  Parker  in  New  Or- 
leans, where  he  had  30  or  40  of  his  men  at  work.  He  desired  to  buy  him,  and 
made  an  offer.  It  was  refused.  He  repeated  that  offer.  Mr.  McD.  said  he  never 
sold.  Meeting  him  again  he  increased  the  sum,  offering  at  last  $5,000  for  Jim, 
when  he  was  peremptorily  refused.  The  following  conversation  occurred : 

'•  Mr.  Parker  finding  at  length,  from  the  refusal  of  such  a  large  sum  of  money  for 
him,  that  there  was  no  hope  of  obtaining  him,  observed  to  me,  Well  then,  Mr. 
McDonough,  seeing  now  that  you  will  not  sell  him  at  any  price,  tell  me  what  kind 
of  people  are  those  of  yours;  to  which  I  replied,  How  so,  Mr.  Parker,  I  suppose 
they  are  like  other  men ;  flesh  and  blood,  like  you  arid  myself;  when  he  replied, 
Why  sir,  I  have  never  seen  such  people;  building  as  they  are  next  door  to  my 
residence,  I  see  and  have  my  eye  on  them  from  morning  till  night.  You  are 
never  there,  for  I  have  never  met  you,  or  seen  you  once  at  the  building;  tell  me, 
sir,  said  he,  where  do  those  people  of  yours  live ;  do  they  cross  the  river  morn- 
ing and  night?  I  informed  him  that  they  lived  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river 


VALUE  OF  THE  INVESTMENT  IN  SLAVES.  69 

where  I  lived  myself,  and  crossed  it  to  their  work,  when  working  in  New  Or- 
leans, night  and  morning-,  except  when  stormy,  (which  happened  very  seldom,) 
when  I  did  not  permit  them  to  cross  it,  to  endanger  their  lives;  at  such  times, 
they  remained  at  home  or  in  the  city.  Why  sir,  said  he,  I  am  an  early  riser,  get- 
ting up  before  day;  and  do  you  think  that  I  am  not  awoke  every  morning  in  my 
life,  by  the  noise  of  their  trowels,  at  work,  and  their  singing  and  noise,  before 
day;  and  do  you  suppose,  sir,  that  they  stop,  or  leave  off  work  at  sun-down?  no, 
sir;  but  they  work  as  long  as  they  can  see  to  lay  brick,  and  then  carry  up  brick 
and  mortar  for  an  hour  or  two  afterwards,  to  be  ahead  of  their  work  the  next 
morning.  And  again,  sir,  do  you  think  that  they  walk  at  their  work?  no,  sir, 
they  run  all  day.  You  see,  sir,  said  he,  those  immensely  long  ladders,  five  stories 
in  height;  do  you  suppose  they  walk  up  them?  No,  sir,  they  run  up  and  down 
them  like  monkeys  the  whole  day  long.  I  never  saw  such  people  as  these,  sir; 
I  do  not  know  what  to  make  of  them ;  were  there  a  white  man  over  them  with  a 
whip  in  his  hand,  all  day,  why  then  I  should  see  and  understand  the  cause  of  their 
running, and  incessant  labor;  but  I  cannot  comprehend  it,  sir;  there  is  something 
in  it,  sir;  there  is  something  in  it.  Great  man,  sir,  that  Jim;  great  man,  sir; 
should  like  to  own  him.  After  having  laughed  very  heartily  at  the  observations 
of  Mr.  Parker,  for  it  was  all  truth,  every  word  of  it,  I  informed  him  that  there  was 
a  secret  about  it,  which  I  would  disclose  to  him  some  day,  and  we  separated. 
Now,  Mr.  Parker  imputed  the  conduct  of  these  people,  for  I  have  given  the  very 
words  and  expressions  he  used,  and  he  is  alive,  hearty  and  well  in  "New  Orleans, 
and  can  be  spoken  to  by  any  one  interested  in  the  subject,  to  the  head  man  who 
conducted  them,  and  in  consequence,  impressed  with  that  belief,  offered  me  five 
thousand  dollars  for  him ;  but  Mr.  Parker  knew  not  the  stimulus  that  acted  on  the 
heart  of  each  and  every  one  of  them ;  that  it  was  the  whole  body  of  them  that 
moved  together  as  one  mind ;  not  one  alone,  the  head  man,  as  he  supposed." 
##*#*#**# 

"  The  ship  in  which  they  sailed  for  Africa  floated  opposite  my  house,  in  the 
Mississippi,  at  the  bank  of  the  river;  I  had  taken  my  leave  of  them  on  going  on 
board  the  ship;  on  Friday  evening,  the  day  previous  to  her  sailing,  in  my  house. 
The  scene  which  there  took  place,  I  will  not  attempt  to  describe.  It  can  never 
be  erased  from  my  memory." 

«**-***#•*# 

"  After  seeing  them  on.  (the  ship  was  taken  by  a  steamer,)  Mr.  McLain  came 
into  my  house,  as  I  was  expecting  him  to  breakfast,  and  on  seeing  him  much  af- 
fected in  his  manner,  (a  tear  standing  in  his  eye,)  I  inquired  if  any  thing  had 
taken  place  to  give  him  pain;  to  which  he  replied,  "Oh,  sir,  it  was  an  affecting 
sight  to  see  them  depart.  They  were  all  on  the  deck  of  the  ship,  and  your  ser- 
vants who  have  not  gone,  were- on  the  shore  bidding  them  farewell,  when  from 
every  tongue  on  board  the  ship,  I  heard  the  charge  to  those  on  shore,  '  Fanny, 
take  care  of  our  master?  '  James,  take  care  of  our  master;  take  care  of  our  master; 
as  you  love  us,  and  hope  to  meet  us  in  heaven,  take  care  of  our  beloved  master?" 

What  do  these  details  amount  to?  They  amount  to  this:  That  these 
slaves,  in  sixteen  years,  besides  doing  for  their  master  all  the  work 
expected  from  them  as  slaves,  did,  under  the  new  stimulus  of  hope 
and  the  proper  excitements  of  a  rational  being,  as  much  additional 
work  as  equalled  the  total  amount  of  work  expected  to  be  done  by 
them  in  their  whole  lives,  beginning  at  the  time  when  the  plan  went  into 
operation, —  because  the  expected  product  of  their  whole  lives'  labor 
was  of  course  the  measure  of  the  price,  set  upon  them  respectively, 
and  which  they  were  required  to  earn  in  order  to  buy  their  free- 
dom. In  other  words,  the  introduction  of  the  new  element  of  per- 
sonal interest,  and  an  intelligent  hopeful  purpose,  made  their  labor, 
in  sixteen  years,  to  be  worth  as  much  as  otherwise  the  total  labor  of 
their  whole  lives,  plus  the  labor  of  sixteen  years  of  the  prime  of  it, 


70  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

would  have  been  worth.  Is  that  an  economical  lesson  worth  a 
slaveholder's  attention  ? 

Nor  is  this  all.  It  seems  to  be  only  half  of  the  truth.  "In  the 
space  of  about  sixteen  years,"  says  Mr.  McDonough,  "  they  have 
gained  for  me,  in  addition  to  having  performed  more  and  better  la- 
bor than  slaves  ordinarily  perform,  in  the  usual  time  of  laboring,  a 
sum  of  money  (including  the  sum  they  appear  to  have  paid  me,  in 
the  purchase  of  their  time,)  which  will  enable  me  to  go  to  Virginia 
or  Carolina,  and  purchase  a  gang  of  people  of  nearly  double  the 
number  of  those  I  have  sent  away."  The  surplus  labor  of  their 
sixteen  years,  under  the  newly  infused  impulse,  was  not  only  suffi- 
cient to  buy  themselves,  but  to  buy  nearly  as  many  more  such.  In 
other  words,  if  we  understand  the  statement,  the  surplus  labor  of 
eight  years,  when  the  thing  came  to  be  seen  to  the  bottom,  amounted 
to  what  was  expected  from  the  labor  of  their  whole  lives  as  slaves, 
with  that  of  the  time  given  to  buy  themselves  added. 

Will  any  body  tell  us  why  what  proved  true  of  Mr.  McDonough's 
eighty  bondmen  would  not,  on  the  whole,  prove  equally  true  of  eighty 
thousand  ;  and  that  the  labor  of  any  number,  in  freedom,  would  not 
turn  out  to  be  worth  to  their  employers  as  much  more  than  their  la- 
bor in  slavery?  We  anticipate  the  reply  that  the  hope  of  emerging 
from  servitude  to  liberty  was  to  these  slaves  a  stronger  motive  than 
would  be,  to  one  already  a  freeman,  the  mere  hope  of  bettering  his 
condition.  And  we  allow  force  to  the  suggestion.  But  we  set  off 
against  it  the  consideration  of  the  greater  intelligence  and  capacity 
acquired  by  the  training  which  freemen  would  command,  and  which 
these  poor  people  wanted.  With  all  their  alacrity  and  good  will, 
still  they  were  only  slaves.  They  had  nothing  to  turn  to  account 
but  their  hands.  They  could  neither  read,  write,  nor  cipher;  and 
they  were  enfeebled  by  all  the  moral  disabilities  of  their  early  con- 
dition. With  the  minds  of  freemen,  under  the  same  stimulus,  they 
would  have  made  shorter  work. 


NO.  XXI. 

WHO  WILL  BE  HARMED  BY  ITS  OVERTHROW?— ECONOMICAL 
CONSIDERATIONS  FOR  THE  SLAVEHOLDER. 

THE  last  number  of  these  papers  contained  an  account  of  an  ex- 
periment made  by  Mr.  McDonough  of  Louisiana  with  eighty  slaves, 
showing  that,  in  converting  them  to  freemen,  he  made  a  good  spec- 
ulation. A  different  experiment  of  the  British  Parliament  on  eight 
hundred  thousand,  justifies  similar  conclusions. 

Mr.  Gurney,  a  Quaker,  a  man  marked  by  the  shrewdness  as  well 


VALUE  OF  THE  INVESTMENT  IN  SLAVES.  71 

as  by  the  sincerity  and  benevolent  temper  of  his  sect,  visited  the 
British  West  India  islands  in  1840,  when  the  experiment  of  culti- 
vation with  emancipated  slaves  had  been  six  years  in  progress.  We 
extract  some  striking  specimens  of  his  testimony  on  the  subject. 

At  St.  Christopher's  he  visited  the  plantation  of  Robert  Clayton, 
Solicitor  General  of  the  Colony. 

"  Speaking  of  a  small  property  on  the  island  belonging  to  himself,  he  said  '  Six 
years  ago  (that  is,  shortly  before  the  act  of  emancipation,)  it  was  worth  only 
£2000,  with  the  slaves  upon  it.  Now,  without  a  single  slave,  it  is  worth  three 
times  the  money.  I  would  not  sell  it  for  £6000.'  This  remarkable  rise  in  the 
value  of  property,  is  by  no  means  confined  to  particular  estates." — Familiar  Let- 
ters to  Henry  Clay,  &c.  p.  35. 

"  In  this  island  the  negroes  perform  a  far  greater  quantity  of  work  in  a  given 
time,  than  could  be  obtained  from  them  under  slavery.  *  They  will  do  an  infinity 
of  work,'  said  one  of  my  informants,  'for  wages.'" 

At  Antigua ; 

"  On  my  inquiring  of  them  [Sir  William  Colebrook,  Governor  General,  and 
Mr.  Gilbert,  a  clergyman]  respecting  the  value  of  landed  property,  their  joint  an- 
swer was  clear  and  decided.  *  At  the  lowest  computation  the  land,  without  a 
single  slave  upon  it,  is  fully  as  valuable  now,  as  it  was,  including  all  the  slaves, 
before  emancipation.'  Satisfactory  as  is  this  computation,  I  have  every  reason  to 
believe  that  it  is  much  below  the  mark.*' — Ibid,  p.  43. 

"  We  understood  that  he  [Mr.  Gilbert]  received  $25,000  as  a  compensation  for 
his  slaves.  He  assured  us  that  this  sum  was  a  mere  present  put  into  his  pocket ; 
a  gratuity,  on  which  he  had  no  reasonable  claim.  Since  his  land,  without  the 
slaves,  is  at  least  of  the  same  value  as  it  was,  with  the  slaves,  before  emancipa- 
tion, and  since  his  profits  are  increased,  rather  than  diminished,  this  consequence 
follows,  of  course." — Ibid,  p.  44. 

"  We  were  now  placed  in  possession  of  clear  documentary  evidence  respecting 
the  staple  produce  of  the  island.  The  average  exports  of  the  last  five  yea-rs  of 
slavery  (1829  to  1833  included.)  were,  sugar,  12,189  hogsheads;  molasses,  3,308 
puncheons;  and  rum,  2,468.  Those  of  the  first  five  years  of  freedom  (1834  to 
1838  inclusive,)  were,  sugar,  13,545  hogsheads;  molasses,  8,308  puncheons ;  and 
rum,  1,109  puncheons;  showing  an  excess  of  1,356  hogsheads  of  sugar;  and  of 
5000  puncheons  of  molasses ;  and  a  diminution  of  1.359  puncheons  of  rum.  * 
*  *  *  It  ought  to  be  observed,  that  these  five  years  of  freedom  included  two 
of  drought,  one  very  calamitous.  The  statement  for  1839  forms  an  admirable  cli- 
max to  this  account.  It  is  as  follows;  sugar,  22,383  hogsheads  (10,000  beyond 
the  last  average  of  slavery);  12,433  puncheons  of  molasses  (also  10,000  beyond 
that  average);  and  only  582  puncheons  of  rum." — Ibid,  p.  53. 

At  Dominica,  the  information  obtained  was 

That  "the  negroes  were  working  delightfully,"  and  that  "they  were  working 
cheerfully,  and  cheaply  to  their  employers  as  compared  with  slavery." — Ibid,  p.  62. 

At  Jamaica, 

"  Under  slavery,  two  hundred  slaves  were  supported  on  Papine  estate;  now  it 
is  worked  by  forty-three  laborers."  "One  hundred  and  seventy  slaves,  or  appren- 
tices, used  to  be  supported  on  this  estate  [Halberstadt].  Now  our  friend  employs 
fifty-four  free  laborers,  who  work  for  him  four  days  in  the  week,  taking  one  day 
for  their  provision  grounds,  and  another  for  market.  This  is  all  the  labor  that  he 
requires." — Ibid,  pp.  77,  83.  The  support  of  the  slaves  on.  this  property  under  the 


72  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

old  system  had  cost  £850  annually ;  the  annual  wages  of  the  free  laborers  amount 
ed  to  £607.10.  Ibid.  In  the  parish  of  St.  Mary,  "in  the  laborious  occupation  of 
holeing,  the  emancipated  negroes  perform  double  the  work  of  the  slave,  in  the  day. 
In  road-making,  the  day's  task,  under  slavery,  was  to  break  four  barrels  of  stone. 
Now,  by  task- work,  a  weak  hand  will  fill  eight  barrels;  a  strong  one,  from  ten  to 
twelve  barrels." — Ibid,  p.  69.  "  Our  friend  [George  Marcy]  a  few  years  since  had 

sold  a  certain  sugar  estate,  called  G ,  for  the  trifling  sum  of  £1500.     'And 

what  dost  thou  suppose  to  be  the  value  of  that  property  now,  friend  Marcy  ?'  said 
one  of  our  company.  'Ten  thousand  pounds,' was  his  immediate  reply." — Ibid, 
p.  111. 

'"I  had  rather  make  sixty  tierces  of  coffee,'  said  A.  B.,  'under  freedom,  than 
one  hundred  and  twenty  under  slavery  ;  such  is  the  saving  of  expense,  that  I  make 
a  better  profit  by  it;  nevertheless,  1  mean  to  make  one  hundred  and  twenty,  as  be- 
fore.1"— Ibid,  p.  118.  "  Do  you  see  that  excellent  new  stone  wall  round  the  field 
below  us?'  said  the  young  physician  to  me,  as  we  stood  at  A.  B.'s  front  door,  sur- 
.veying  the  delightful  scenery.  'That  wall  could  scarcely  have  been  built  at  all 
under  slavery,  or  the  apprenticeship ;  the  necessary  labor  could  not  have  been 
hired  at  less  than  £5  currency,  or  about  $13  per  chain.  Under  freedom,  it  cost 
only  from  $2.50  to  $4.00  per  chain,  not  one-third  of  the  amount.  Still  more  re- 
markable is  the  fact,  that  the  whole  of  it  was  built  under  the  stimulus  of  job-work, 
by  an  invalid  negro,  who,  during  slavery,  had  been  given  up  to  total  inaction  l? 
This  was  the  substance  of  onr  conversation;  the  information  was  afterwards  fully 
confirmed  by  the  proprietor.  Such  was  the  fresh  blood  infused  into  the  veins  of 
this  decrcpid  person  by  the  genial  hand  of  freedom,  that  he  had  been  redeemed 
from  absolute  uselessness,  had  executed  a  noble  work,  had  greatly  improved  his 
master's  property,  and  finally  had  realized  for  himself  a  handsome  sum  of  money." 
— Ibid,  p.  119. 

" '  I  know  the  case  of  a  property,'  observes  Dr.  Stewart,  '  on  which  there  were 
one  hundred  and  twenty -five  slaves,  the  expense  amounting  (at  £5  per  annum  for 
the  maintenance  of  each  slave,)  to  £625.  The  labor  account  for  the  first  year  of 
freedom,  deducting  rents,  was  only  £220,  leaving  a  balance,  in  favor  of  freedom, 
of  £400.  More  improvement  had  been  made  on  the  property  than  for  many  years 
past,  with  a  prospect  of  an  increasing  extent  of  cultivation.  On  a  second  prop- 
erty, the  slave  and  apprenticeship  expenses  averaged  £2400 ;  the  labor  account, 
for  the  first  year  of  freedom,  was  less  than  £850.  On  a  third  estate,  the  year's 
expense,  under  slavery,  was  £1480;  under  apprenticeship,  £1050;  under  free- 
dom, £637.  On  a  fourth,  the  reduction  is  from  £1100  to  £770.'  'I  believe  in 
my  conscience,'  says  the  same  gentleman,  '  that  property  in  Jamaica,  without  the 
slaves,  is  as  valuable  as  it  formerly  was  with  them.  I  believe  its  value  would 
double,  by  sincerely  turning  away  from  all  relics  of  slavery,  to  the  honest  free 
working  of  a  free  system.'"*— Ibid,  pp.  120,  121. 

The  "  Letters  on  the  Slave  Trade,  Slavery,  and  Emancipation," 
by  G.  W.  Alexander,  two  years  later  than  the  work  of  Mr.  Gurney, 
confirm  his  representations  in  essential  particulars.  He  says  (p.  80), 

"In  British  Guiana,  "a  colony  which  has  suffered  more  from  drought  than 
any  other  since  the  introduction  of  freedom,  and  where,  in  consequence  of 
this  circumstance  and  others  to  which  reference  has  been  made,  the  exports 
of  sugar  have  lessened  considerably,  eighteen  estates  have  been  sold  subse- 
quently to  the  Abolition  Act  corning  into  effect,  which  have  realized  in  almost 
every  instance,  as  much  as  would  have  been  obtained  for  them,  together  ivith  the 
slaves,  during  the  period  of  slavery.  Property  in  Georgetown,  in  the  same  colony, 
has  increased  in  value  from  8,133,070  guilders,  to  9,981,550  guilders,  or  1,848,490 
in  the  space  of  three  years,  between  1836  and  1839;  the  former  year  being  the 

*  At  that  vast  and  admirably  managed  establishment,  the  St.  Charles  Hotel  in 
New  Orleans,  v/e  observed,  in  1843,  that  all  the  servants  were  free.  They  must 
have  been  brought  and  kept  there  at  great  expense,  but  it  was  genuine  economy. 
The  head  of  the  house  was  from  Lynn  in  Massachusetts,  and  understood  these 
things. 


VALUE  OF  THE  INVESTMENT  IN  SLAVES.  73 

time  of  the  apprenticeship."  Again,  (p.  165):  "The  value  of  the  slaves  [in  the 
Spanish  Islands]  would,  as  a  natural  consequence,  be  transferred  to  the  soil,  and 
such  has  been  the  case  to  a  very  great  extent  in  the  British  West  Indies.  In  a 
very  large  proportion  of  instances,  estates  can  now  be  sold  for  as  large  a  sum  as 
could  formerly  be  obtained  for  them  with  the  slaves  attached.  In  towns,  also,  a 
great  increase  has  taken  place  in  the  value  both  of  land  and  houses." 

In  illustration  of  the  increase  of  profitable  industry  in  later  years, 
we  give  the  following  statement  of  the  exportation  of  sugar,  the 
principal  product  of  the  British  West  India  Islands  : — 

In  1841.  121,295  hogsheads,  12,225  tierces. 

1842,'  135,910          "          15,985       " 

1843,  141,100         "          13,640       " 

1844,  138,150          "          16,395 

1845,  157,200         «          20,075       " 

No  doubt,  from  temporary  causes,  partly  incident  to  the  change 
in  the  nature  of  labor,  and  in  part  wholly  extraneous  to  that  ques- 
tion, the  exportation  of  the  staples  suffered  some  decrease.  But 
exportation  is  not  the  standard  of  lucrative  industry,  nor  of  the 
rents,  profits,  or  wealth  of  proprietors.  No  small  quantity  of  the 
sugar,  molasses,  coffee,  and  other  commodities,  which  before  eman- 
cipation had  nearly  all  been  sent  abroad,  was  from  that  time  con- 
sumed by  the  blacks,  who  paid  as  much  for  it  to  the  land-holder 
as  the  foreign  consumer  had  done,  perhaps  more.  And  suppose, 
instead  of  raising  as  much  sugar  as  before,  the  negro  chose  to  turn 
part  of  his  industry  into  the  cultivation  of  yarns,  bananas,  plantains, 
pine  apples,  and  other  fruits  and  vegetables  for  his  family  or  for  the 
market,  what  did  the  landlord  lose  by  that  ?  What,  rather,  did  he 
not  gain  ?  For,  of  course,  the  better  the  tenant  could  suit  himself 
with  his  farming,  the  more  rent  would  he  be  willing  to  pay.  Un- 
doubtedly, in  ths  long  run,  the  most  profitable  products  will  receive 
the  most  cultivation,  and.  rent  and  value  will  keep  pace  with  pro- 
ducts, whether  exported  or  consumed  at  home.  Certainly  we  have 
discussed  tariff  principles  in  this  country,  enough  to  understand  that 
a  home  market  may  be  as  good,  or  better,  both  to  the  laborer  and 
land  owner,  than  a  foreign  one. 

We  cannot  so  much  as  glance  at  all  the  aspects  of  this  great  sub- 
ject, but  we  must  not  leave  it  without  a  single  word  about  the  other 
side  of  the  custom-house  ledger. 

"  The  change  for  the  better,"  says  Mr.  Gurney,  (p.  36),  "  in  the  dress,  demean- 
or, and  welfare  of  the  people,  is  prodigious.  The  imports  are  vastly  increased. 
The  duties  tin  them  [in  St.  Christopher's]  were  £1000  more  in  1838,  than  in  1837  : 
and  in  1839,  double  those  of  1838.  within  £150.  This  surprising  increase  is  ow- 
ing to  the  demand  on  the  part  of  the  free  laborers,  for  imported  goods,  especially 
for  articles  of  dress." 

Again  (p.  64)  ; 

"The  average  imports  of  the  last  five  years  of  slavery  [in  Dominica]  were  of 
the  value  of  £64,000.  In  1839,  thev  amounted  to  £120,000,  although  certain 


74  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

vessels,  which  had  been  expected,  had  not  yet  arrived,  when  the  accounts  were 
made  up; — the  difference  [in  the  year]  in  favor  of  freedom,  £5G,000 ;  a  sum  which 
mainly  represents  an  increase  of  comforts  enjoyed  by  the  emancipated  negroes." 

What  does  this  mean  ?  It  means  a  great  many  thjngs,  which  we 
cannot  now  stop  so  much  as  to  hint  at.  Among  other  things,  it 
means  that  the  free  blacks  were  able  to  pay  for  the  large  amount  of 
property  they  imported,  either  from  what  they  earned  as  laborers, 
or  from  business  transacted  on  their  own  account.  And,  in  either 
case,  a  full  portion  of  the  benefit  of  course  inured  to  their  richer 
neighbors.  People  do  not  get  high  wages  without  profit  to  their 
employers.  Nor  do  they  carry  on  an  advantageous  business  with- 
out a  proportionably  high  rent  to  their  landlords.  We  commend 
this  class  of  facts  to  the  notice  of  any  of  our  manufacturers,  who 
may  have  given  "  an  attent  ear  "  to  Mr.  Secretary  Walker's  argu- 
ment, and  been  willing  to  have  Texas  peopled  with  slaves.* 

An  illustration  or  two  of  this  topic  from  facts  nearer  home,  and 
we  dismiss  it.  The  rents  of  equally  productive  lands  bear  a  pretty 
fair  proportion  to  the  density  of  population.  Between  1830  and 
1840,  the  increase  of  population  in  the  Free  States  of  this  Union 
was  38  per  cent ;  in  the  Slave  States,  it  was  23  per  cent.  What 
made  this  difference  ?  No  reflecting  person  doubts  that  it  was 
Slavery ;  and  in  checking  the  growth  of  numbers,  it  affected  pro- 
portionably the  rise  of  property. 

Compare  Kentucky  and  Ohio,  contiguous  States,  of  about  equal 
area  (Kentucky  is  the  larger),  and  nearly  equal  fertility,  the  advan- 
tage, however,  in  this  respect  also,  being  probably  with  the  former. 
In  1790,  Ohio  was  an  Indian  wilderness,  and  Kentucky  had  61,227 
free  inhabitants.  In  1840  Kentucky  had  a  population  of  597,570 
freemen  (with  182,258  slaves),  and  Ohio  of  1,519,467;  and  Ohio 
had  a  capital  of  seventeen  millions  of  dollars  employed  in  manu- 
ufactures,  which  give  an  added  worth  to  everything  around  them, 
and  which  (in  all  but  the  lowest  branches,  at  least)  every  commu- 
nity must  give  up  the  thought  of,  which  allows  itself  to  employ  ser- 
vile labor.  Cincinnatti,  above  the  obstruction  of  the  falls  of  Ohio, 
has  46,000  inhabitants  ;  Louisville,  below  them,  has  21, 000.  f 

Compare  New  York  and  Virginia ;  the  latter,  in  respect  to  merely 
natural  advantages,  the  Paradise  of  America.  In  1790,  Virginia, 
with  a  great  comparative  accumulation  of  wealth,  had  a  population 

*  It  has  been  stated  that,  as  long  ago  as  1343,  the  emancipated  slaves  of  the  Brit- 
ish colonies  consumed  five  times  the  amount  of  manufactured  goods  that  they  had 
done  in  slavery. 

t  In  a  letter  received  this  month  from  an  intelligent  gentleman  of  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  he  informs  us  ;  "  The  most  intelligent  men  of  my  acquaintance  in  this 
State  are  of  opinion  that,  if  slavery  were  abolished,  the  land  in  Kentucky  would  be 
worth,  in  five  years  after  the  declaration  of  emancipation,  quite  as  much  as  both 
land  and  slaves  now  are."  He  adds ;  "  There  is  almost  no  immigration  to  the  State, 
owing  to  the  existence  of  slavery." 


DISSOLUTION    OF    THE    UNION.  75 

of  748,308  on  a  surface  of  70,000  square  miles  ;  New  York,  on  her 
territory  of  45,658,  had  340,110  people.  In  1840,  Virginia  had 
1,239,797  inhabitants;  New  York,  2,428,921  ;  while  the  estimated 
property  of  Virginia,  in  1838,  was  $212,000,000;  of  New  York, 
in  1839,  $654,000,000. 

Compare  Maryland  on  her  beautiful  bay,  with  cold  and  stony 
Massachusetts  ;  the  latter  has  98  free  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile, 
the  former,  27.  Compare  Michigan  and  Arkansas,  regions  open  to 
emigration,  received  into  the  Union  nearly  together.  The  whites, 
in  ten  years  before  1840,  had  increased  in  the  respective  ratios  of 
200  per  cent,  in  the  latter  State,  and  574  in  the  former.  Compare 
Pennsylvania  with  the  contiguous  States  on  her  southern  border. 
Washington  compared  them,  and  he  said  that  the  difference  between 
them  was  owing  to  the  Pennsylvania  laws  for  the  abolition  of  slav- 
ery ;  "  laws,"  he  added,  "  which  there  is  nothing  more  certain  than 
that  Maryland  and  Virginia  must  have,  and  that  at  a  period  not 
remote." 

Yes,  if  our  Southern  compatriots  wish  to  grow  rich,  let  them  take 
the  effectual  step  of  giving  up  that  twelve  hundred  millions  of  dol- 
lars worth  of  men,  which  Mr.  Clay  said  was  too  much  for  them  to 
sacrifice. 


NO.  XXII. 

WHAT   SHOULD   THE  FREE   STATES   DO    ABOUT  IT? 

IN  the  first  place,  there  are  two  things  which  they  should  not  do. 

1.  They  should  not  meditate  a  severance  of  the  Union  of  the  States. 
Disunion  would  be  as  evil  a  thing  as  it  is  painted  by  any  of  those, 
who,  by  dwelling  exclusively  on  its  evils,  put  their  consciences  to 
sleep  in  respect  to  that  Slavery,  which,  as  long  as  it  exists,  will  threat- 
en, more  than  all  other  causes  together,  to  bring  it  about.  The 
condition  of  two  nations,  related  to  each  other  like  the  sections 
North  and  South  of  the  border  line  of  slavery,  would  be  of  very 
different  degrees  of  calamity  to  the  two,  but  it  would  be  such  to 
both,  as  neither  should  entertain  the  thought  of  hazarding.  This 
united  nation,  badly  as  in  some  respects  it  has  begun,  has  a  good 
deal  yet  to  do  in  the  world  ;  a  large  space  to  fill  in  history  ;  a  bene- 
ficent work  to  accomplish  for  humanity ;  and  it  is  not  going  to  di- 
vest itself  of  the  power  by  any  such  suicidal  proceeding. 

We  of  the  Free  States  cannot  consent  to  the  losses  and  evils  of 
separation,  though  no  doubt  they  would  be  much  lighter  to  us  than 
to  the  threatening  and  blustering  party.  The  South  (or  some  of 
her  madcaps  for  her)  trembling  for  the  security  of  her  "  peculiar 
institution,"  is  plotting  to  get  out  of  the  Union,  by  sowing  among 


76  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

her  ignorant  population  jealousies  of  their  northern  brethren  ;  by  ex- 
tending Slave  States  to  the  Southwest ;  and  by  the  adoption  of  Cal- 
ifornia, helping  her  poor  commercial  resources  with  a  good  port  on 
the  Pacific  within  slave  territory.  But  we  cannot  afford  to  lose  her, 
and  she  shall  not  go.  We  cannot  spare  the  brotherhood  of  the  up- 
right and  patriotic  non-slaveholders,  who  are  destined  yet  to  learn 
their  strength,  and  wield  an  enlightened  and  salutary  power  with- 
in her  borders.  What  is  of  less,  but  still  great  account,  we  must 
continue  to  have  a  way  in  and  out  of  the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi. 
They  are  an  outside-door  of  Cincinnati  and  Pittsburg  as  much  as  of 
New  Orleans,  and  of  Philadelphia  as  much  as  either.  New  York 
and  Boston  give  and  receive  one  tide  of  wealth  across  parallels  of 
Ahe  Atlantic  ocean,  and  another  along  the  continuous  track  of  iron 
road  and  western  waters  down  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Therefore 
the  North,  both  East  and  West,  must  stop  those  long  strides  of 
South  Carolina  towards  disunion,  and  California,  if  it  ever  gets  ad- 
mission at  all,  must  come  in  without  a  slave.  So  said  the  proviso, 
introduced  into  the  house  of  Representatives  by  the  democratic 
Mr.  Wilmot  of  Pennsylvania  ;  and  the  people  of  the  Free  States, 
with  a  unanimity  unparalleled  for  years,  have  responded  their  deep 
amen. 

As  to  the  most,  and  the  worst,  of  the  evils  and  disgraces  of  our 
connexion  with  slavery,  disunion  would  be  no  reasonable  remedy 
even  for  them ;  because,  whenever  the  Free  States  should  be  in  a 
condition  to  apply  that  remedy,  they  would  be  in  a  condition  to 
effect  the  same  object  without  any  such  strong  expedient.  Of  course 
the  Free  States  could  not.  under  any  circumstances,  proceed  to  car- 
ry out  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  for  the  purpose  of  escape  from 
the  companionship  of  slavery,  till  there  had  been  created  among 
their  citizens  such  a  paramount  sense  of  the  intolerable  nature  of 
the  evil,  as  would  turn  their  political  action  vigorously  in  that  di- 
rection. And  when  that  was  the  case,  there  would  be  no  occasion 
for  any  violent  measures.  The  same  state  of  things  which  render- 
ed such  measures  possible,  would  render  them  needless.  The  Free 
States,  by  their  heavy  majority,  would  exercise  the  regular  functions 
of  the  government.  Their  salutary  legislation  would  at  once  efface 
some  of  the  (to  themselves)  worst  abuses  of  the  atrocious  institu- 
tion ;  and  the  non-slaveholding  interest  in  the  Slave  States,  sus- 
tained and  encouraged  by  the  countenance  of  the  central  adminis- 
tration, and  by  the  contagion  of  a  lofty  sentiment  of  public  virtue 
beyond  their  borders,  would  probably  not  be  very  long  in  breaking 
down  all  of  the  abuses  that  remained. 

Again  ;  the  Free  States  ought  not  to  think  of  disunion,  because 
it  would  separate  them  from  their  best  auxiliaries  in  that  work,  which, 
for  the  safety  of  all  parties,  must  be  done.  \Ve  want  the  help  of 
the  non-slaveholding  white  men  of  the  Southern  States,  and  they 
want  ours,  to  throw  off  from  both  the  burden  of  this  insufferable 
wrong.  To  separate  ourselves  from  them  would  be  to  leave 


FREEDOM    TO    DISCUSS    IT.  77 

them  in  the  hands  of  their  hard  masters,  with  far  less  hope  of 
relief  than  that  which  many  of  them  are  now  indulging.  We  and 
they  have  a  just  claim,  in  this  exigency,  to  such  aid  as  we  can  give 
to  each  other,  through  the  action  of  our  common  government,  and 
through  the  free  communication  of  thought  and  purpose  between 
fellow-citizens,  on  matters  of  high  common  interest. 

Constitutional  proceedings,  then,  alone  are  to  be  thought  of,  for 
the  abatement  of  this  monstrous  nuisance.  A  disunion  of  the  States, 
on  all  other  accounts  a  calamity,  does  not  change  its  character  when 
viewed  in  relation  to  this  end.  But 

2.  Neither  are  we  to  allow  ourselves  to  be  diverted  from  freely  dis- 
cussing this  great  and  vital  question  of  humanity  and  of  American 
politics,  by  senseless  outcries  of  disloyalty  or  danger  to  the  Union, 
or  by  vehement  reproaches  of  any  who  may  have  hitherto  discussed 
it  with  more  or  less  of  good  judgment  and  good  temper.  The 
people  of  the  Free  States  have  now  business  far  more  important  and 
serious  in  hand,  than  that  of  finding  fault  with  abolitionists;  and  he 
who  suspects  others  of  favoring  disunion,  because  they  would  expose 
the  element  of  discord  which  makes  the  Union  insecure,  will  do 
well,  out  of  regard  to  his  self-esteem  at  a  future  day,  to  revise  his 
logic  before  he  commits  it  to  tenacious  paper. 

In  his  reply,  last  autumn,  to  members  of  the  Anti-Texas  Commit- 
tee who  had  solicited  his  aid  in  furtherance  of  their  object,  Mr.  Apple- 
ton,  referring  to  a  portion  of  the  Abolition  party,  said,  "  I  cannot  sym- 
pathise with  their  cry  of '  Accursed  be  the  tlnion.'  "  What  if  he  could 
not  ?  W^ho  asked  him  to  sympathise  with  any  such  cry  ?  Who 
asked  him  to  do  any  thing  more  than  help  save  the  Union  from  com- 
ing  under  a  curse,  which,  according  to  his  avowed  opinion,  has  since 
settled  upon  it?  The  gentlemen  whom  he  addressed  were  each  of 
them  under  an  official  oath,  to  "support  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States."  The  reflection  upon  them,  as  if  they  could  intend 
disloyalty  to  the  Union,  was  a  fierce  one.  If  Mr.  Appleton's  pow- 
er had  been  greater,  it  would  have  been  cruel.  But  the  men  at 
whom  it  was  aimed  are  not  unknown  in  this  community,  and  they 
are  able  to  bear  it.  There  is  no  appearance  yet  that  it  has  cost  them 
any  part  of  their  share  of  the  public  confidence.  They  love  the 
Union  with  an  affection  as  warm  as  his  own,  and  perhaps  more 
considerate ;  and,  because  they  love  it,  they  feel  bound  to  do  what 
little  in  them  lies  to  relieve  it  from  its  most  shameful  discredit  and 
its  most  alarming  danger. 

Mr.  Appleton  said  furthermore,  by  way  of  reply  to  an  invitation 
to  aid  in  multiplying  petitions  to  prevent  the  admission,  by  Congress, 
of  Texas,  as  a  Slave  State,  into  the  Union : 

"  It  is  at  least  questionable  whether  the  Abolition  movement  is  reconcilable 
with  duty  under  the  Constitution.  At  any  rate,  that  movement,  as  conducted, 
was  calculated,  in  my  opinion,  to  produce,  and  has  produced,  nothing  but  evil. 
It  has  banded  the  South  into  a  solid  phalanx  in  resistance  to  what  they  consider 
an  impertinent  and  unjustifiable  interference  with  their  own  peculiar  rights  and 


78  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

business.  It  has  thus  exasperated  their  feelings,  and,  hy  its  operation  on  their 
fears,  has  increased  the  severity  of  the  slave  laws.  It  has  postponed  the  period 
of  emancipation  in  the  more  Northern  Slave  States,  which  were  fast  ripening  for 
that  event." 

Much  of  this  appears  to  have  been  written  in  exceeding  igno- 
rance of  the  subject.  Whether  the  Abolition  party  has  done  more 
or  less  that  was  right  or  wrong,  few  persons,  we  suppose,  of  as  much 
general  intelligence  and  information  as  Mr.  Appleton,  would  now 
impute  to  it  the  production  of  just  those  mischiefs  which  he  attrib- 
utes to  its  agency.  He  must  reason  very  differently  upon  well 
known  principles  of  human  nature  from  what  we  have  been  taught 
to  do,  if  he  really  supposes  that  the  slave  is  worse  treated  because 
the  eyes  of  the  whole  civilized  arid  Christian  world  have  been  sharp- 
ly turned  upon  the  master;  and  who  does  not  know  with  what  in- 
creased anxiety  the  Southern  planter  now  pays  to  the  better  public 
opinion  of  the  other  portions  of  the  country,  the  respect  of  insisting 
that  his  rule  is  a  mild  and  generous  one  ?  To  persons  who  have 
had  opportunity  to  compare  the  recent  physical  treatment  of  slaves 
with  that  often,  twenty,  thirty  years  ago,  nothing  is  more  notorious 
\  than  the  fact  of  their  improved  condition  in  such  particulars  as 
i  those  of  food,  shelter,  and  clothing.  We  have  before  us,  in  a 
\  pamphlet  of  some  seventy  or  eighty  pages,  an  account  of  Proceed- 
ings of  a  Meeting  in  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  last  year,  "  On  the 
Religious  Instruction  of  the  Negroes."  Is  this  step,  taken  after  the 
outcry  against  the  inhumanity  of  slavery  had  become  loudest  abroad, 
a  token  that  the  remonstrance  of  disgusted  humanity  had  made  the 
slave-holder  more  unrelenting,  or  on  the  contrary,  that  it  may  have 
done  something  to  awaken  reflection,  or  conscience,  or  shame? 

The  "  Abolition  movement,"  says  Mr.  Appleton,  "  has  banded 
the  South  into  a  solid  phalanx,  in  resistance  to  what  they  consider 
an  impertinent  and  unjustifiable  interference  with  their  own  pecu- 
liar rights  and  business."  He  should  have  said,  it  has  banded  the 
southern  slave-holders ;  for,  as  far  as  it  has  had  any  influence,  it  has 
done  any  thing  else  but  band  with  them,  for  that  purpose,  the  ether 
part  of  the  white  population.  There  are  thousands  in  the  South, 
who  have  been  brought  to  see  that  Slavery,  not  efforts  for  its  over- 
throw, is  a  very  "impertinent  and  unjustifiable  interference  with 
their  own  peculiar  rights  and  business."  And  even  when  applied  to 
the  slave-holders,  the  remark  needs  much  qualification.  Cassius  M. 
Clay  and  others  would  not  stay  banded  in  that  phalanx.  Many  more 
consciences  have  been  reached,  than,  under  the  pressure  of  circum- 
stances, have  as  yet  made  their  convictions  or  uneasiness  known  ; 
and  we  and  Mr.  Appleton,  without  living  very  long,  may  live  to  see 
that  Abolition  is  not  the  hoop  that  \vill  hold  the  rotten  cask  of  sla- 
very together. 

"  It  has  postponed  the  period  of  emancipation,"  &c.  So  it  is 
said,  we  know,  by  many  persons  in  the  South,  while  others  entertain 


ABOLITIONISM.  79 

strongly  the  opposite  opinion.       We  incline  to  think  that  the  latter 
are  right,  and  that  the  charge,  on  the  whole,  is  only  a  specimen  of  that 
species  of  popular  appeal  which  "  Salmagundi"  used  to  call  slang- 
whanging,  set  up  as  one  of  the  methods  of  putting  the   movement 
in  favor  of  liberty  to  rest.     In  that  progress  of  sound  views  on  the 
subject  which  has  been  going  on  in  Kentucky,  Maryland,  and  else- 
where, we  see  no  indications,  whatever  Mr  Appleton  may  do,  that 
it  would  have  taken  place  earlier,  or  developed  itself  more  strongly, 
had  the  question  of  freedom  never  been  discussed  in  the  Free  States. 
"It  has  exasperated  their  feelings."       In  this  statement  there  is 
much  truth.     But  we  draw  a  different  inference  from  it.     The  hot, 
undignified,  and  imprudent  exasperation  of  the   slave-holders  is  to 
us  a  proof  of  conscious  weakness,  rather   than  of  self-relying  and 
determined    strength.      The  South,  in  its  childish   fury,   stamps  on 
our    petitions,    bullies  our  representatives  into   silence,  imprisons, 
whips,  threatens   to  sell,    perhaps   sells,  our   colored    citizens,  in- 
sults and  expels  our  white  ones.     Is  not   Mr.  Appleton  acquainted 
with  that  significant  line  of  the  poet  Crabbe,  "  He  put  his  anger 
on  to  hide  his  shame  ?"      Is  he  not  experienced  man   of  the  world 
enough  to  know  that  the  stormiest  protestations,  and  the  most  vio- 
lent acts,  generally  proceed  from  a  secret  distrust  of  the  goodness  of 
one's  cause?      Whatever  God  means  to  destroy,  first  he  maddens;  so 
said  very  ancient  wisdom.     Slavery,  on  its  way  to  be  destroyed,  it 
first  demented  with  passion.       We  read  in  the  holy  book,  that  it 
was  when  the  evil  spirit  was  about  to  be  driven  out  of  a  man,  that  it 
•'•'  tare"  its  victim,  "  and  he  fell  on  the  ground,  and  wallowed  foam- 
ing."    So  these  violent  demonstrations  of  slavery  are  the  spasmod- 
ic contortions  of  the  doomed  and  departing  demon.       It  is   while 
that  unclean  spirit  is  undergoing  exorcism,  that  it  plays  its  most  cra- 
zy antics,  and  foams  out  the  slaver  of  its  imbecile  and  short-lived 
rage. 

Such  objections  to  the  free  utterance  of  the  true  and  sober  words  of 
justice,  humanity,  and  patriotism,  have  had  their  day.  Neither  facts 
nor  good  sense  sustain  them.  An  enormous  moral,  social  and  political 
evil  exists,  which  must  be  exposed,  calmly,  but  plainly  and  fearlessly, 
in  order  to  its  removal  by  peaceable  and  constitutional  means. 

In  a  sketch  of  the  life  of  Knibb,  one  of  the  Baptist  benefactors 
of  Jamaica,  we  find  some  of  the  transactions  between  them  and  the 
planters  thus  summed  up.  ;;  Knibb  and  his  coadjutors  came  to  an 
agreement  with  the  planters,  that  Slavery  and  Christianity  could  not 
exist  together  ;  and  there  they  parted.  The  planters  said,  l  We 
will  exterminate  Christianity  ' ;  the  missionaries  rejoined,  (  We  will 
abolish  slavery.' '  Our  "  planters  "  have  come  up  to  their  part  of 
a  similar  agreement  with  the  free  people  of  the  North.  They  have 
insisted  on  saying,  "  We  will  exterminate  Liberty.  We  will  deny 
jury  trials  to  persons  claiming  to  be  free.  We  will  tread  on  your 
petitions  in  your  national  legislative  halls.  We  will  stop  your  mouths 
among  us  by  panic  or  by  shot.  We  will  incarcerate,  flay,  and  sell 


80  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

your  people."  They  have  forced  on  us  the  necessity  of  replying, 
"  We  are  not  content  with  this  arrangement,  and  therefore  we  will 
abolish  Slavery.  We  will  limit  it,  as  far  as  we  may  legitimately  do 
so,  by  the  operation  of  laws,  which  our  common  Constitution  per- 
mits us  to  frame.  We  will  remove  it  ultimately, —  we,  or  they  who 
are  to  come  after  us, —  by  the  force  of  reason  acting  on  the  minds 
of  the  rightful  local  authorities  where  it  prevails." 


NO.  XXIII. 

&i  • 

WHAT   CAN  THE  FREE  STATES   DO   ABOUT  IT? 

SOME  people,  when  they  have  pronounced  these  words,  seem  to 
think  that  they  have  given  birth  to  an  enormous  witticism, 
such  that  the  intensity  of  the  labor  dispenses  them  for  the  present 
from  all  exertion  whatsoever. 

I.  One  thing,  however,  quite  clearly,  the  Free  States  are  able  to 
do,  by  their  own  power  in  the  national  legislature  alone,  and  must 
do,  if  they  do  not  mean  to  be  an  astonishment,  and  a  by-word, 
and  a  hissing  in  the  earth.  They  must  put  their  foot  down,  and 
say,  Slavery  shall  live  no  more  in  any  Territory  of  this  nation,  and 
henceforward  no  State  shall  ever  be  admitted  into  the  Union  with  a 
Constitution  recognizing  its  existence.  The  disastrous  Missouri 
Compromise  must  never  more  be  repeated. 

A  most  auspicious  sign  of  restored  sanity  on  this  subject,  in  both 
parties  of  the  Free  States,  was  afforded  by  Mr.  Wilmot's  proviso  to 
the  Two  Million  Bill,  which  carried  with  it  all  but  nine  of  the  North- 
ern Representatives,  and,  in  the  peculiar  state  of  circumstances, 
would  have  had  no  bad  chance  in  the  Senate,  but  for  a  mischievous 
blunder  in  a  quarter  where  it  should  not  have  been  looked  for.  The 
South  will  move  heaven,  earth,  and  the  shades,  to  drive  us  from  that 
position.  Sophistry,  blandishments,  bullying  and  bribery,  will  be 
dealt  out  in  even  unwonted  profusion.  But  if  there  is  a  particle  of 
ancient  manhood  left  in  the  Free  States,  here  they  will  be  immov- 
able. Hie  terminus  haret.  The  time  when  you  have  taken  your 
foe  at  disadvantage,  and  felled  him  with  a  stunning  blow,  is  just  the 
time  to  deal  another,  and  despatch  him.  This  the  Slave  Power 
well  understands,  and,  having  forced  Texas  into  the  confederacy, 
already  talks  of  making  its  handful  of  people  yield  two  more  United 
States  Senators  by  a  division  into  two  States.  Will  it  be  done? 
Already  this  is  announced  as  part  of  the  plan  of  the  Washington 
campaign  of  this  coming  winter.  Is  there  unfathomable  scoundrel- 
ism  enough  among  the  Northern  members  to  allow  it  to  succeed  ? 


WHAT    CAN    THE    FREE    STATES    DO?  81 

If  there  is  not  in  this  Congress,  there  is  a  fair  prospect  that  the  time 
for  it  will  have  gone  by. 

II.  There  are  two  measures,  also  matters  of  national  legislation 
merely,  which  the  North  absolutely  requires  for  its  protection,  and 
which,  though  not  capable  of  being  carried  through  both  Houses  of 
Congress,  by  its  own  strength  alone,  are  of  such  obvious  necessity 
and  justice,  that,  till  obtained,  it  should  never  cease  to  insist  upon 
them  with  a  unanimous  and  peremptory  determination. 

1.  One  is,  the  repeal  of  that  unutterably  heinous  law  of  February 
12th,  1793,  which  makes  the  ears  of  every  freeman  that  hears  of  it 
to  tingle,   providing  that  every  American  freeman's  liberty,  —  his 
and  his  posterity's  forever,  —  shall  be  at  the  mercy  of  any  miserable 
town  or  county  magistrate,  whom  the  kidnapper  may  select,  and 
dupe  or  bribe  to  do  his  accursed  work.     Pennsylvania  and  other 
States  undertook  to  throw  over  their  citizens  the  shield  of  a  jury 
trial.     But  in  the  recent  case  of  Prigg  versus  Pennsylvania,  the  Su- 
preme Court  adjudged  that  the  United  States  legislation  was  para- 
mount and  exclusive,  and  that,  though  a  man  could  not  be  wronged 
out  of  twenty-one  dollars  without  the   judgment  of   his  peers,  he 
might  be,  out  of  what  is  dearer  than  life.     Freemen  of  the  chain- 
less  Bay,  of  the  free  mountains  of  New  England,  of  the  free  prai- 
ries of  the  West,  do  you   believe  it  ?     Borrow  the  Statute  Book ; 
find  the  loathsome  page ;  read  the  incredible  words  ;  and  ask  what 
your  fathers  fought  for. 

2.  The  other  measure  is,  the  opening  of  the  Federal  Courts  to 
citizens  of  the  Free  States  threatened  with  injury  to  property,  per- 
son, liberty,  or  life,  by  the  pseudo-legislation  of  the   Slave  country. 
If  we  were  not  restrained  by  our  Constitutional  union  with  the 
States  which  so  insult  and  wrong  us,  we  should  not  be  long  in 
righting  ourselves.     We  gave  up  our  own  power  of  protecting  the 
vital  interests  of  our  people,  only  on  condition   that  they  should  be 
protected  by  the  Federal  arm.     South  Carolina  warns  away  the  free 
citizen  of  Massachusetts  from  a  soil  which  he  has  as  good  a  right 
to  tread  as  her  own  proudest  man.     She  seizes  him  before  he  has 
stepped  upon  the  shore,  and  strips  him  for  the  lash,  or  sells   him  to 
life-long  slavery  under  the  hammer.     She  closes  against  him  those 
Courts  of  our  common  country,  where  he   would  present  his  suit, 
and  invoke  the  venerable  arbitration   of   the  Constitution  and  the 
Law.     She  threatens  and  drives  away  with  gross  insult  the  minister 
of  the  law  who  would  plead  his  cause,  himself  as  much    privileged 
and  as  much  outraged  as  the  suitor.     And  finally,  she    makes  it 
highly  penal  to  ask  for  safety  and  justice  within  her  borders. 

Redress  in  these  two  essential  particulars,  though  belonging  to 
the  province  of  the  simple  legislation  of  Congress,  cannot  now  be 
obtained  by  the  power  of  even  the  united  North  alone,  because  the 
Senate,  in  which  half  the  voters  are  from  slave-holding  States,  must 
concur  in  the  passage  of  any  law  to  repeal  the  Act  of  1793,  or  (in 

6 


82  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

the  words  of  the  Massachusetts  Resolve  of  1845)  "  to  extend  by 
appropriate  legislation  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Federal  Courts,  so  as 
to  embrace  and  give  redress  in  all  cases  of  wrong  done  to  the  per- 
sonal and  commercial  rights  of  the  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  se- 
cured to  them  by  the  Constitution  and  laws."  But,  in  cases  so 
clear,  it  is  impossible  that  some  Senators  from  the  Slave  States 
should  not  be  found  voting  with  us.  It  seems  impossible  that  Sen- 
ators like  Mr.  Clayton,  Mr.  Johnson,  Mr.  Crittenden,  Mr.  Morehead, 
men  personally  so  upright,  and  representing  States  already  so  in- 
fected with  free  principles,  should  make  up  their  minds  to  a  perse- 
verance in  such  impudent  injustice. 

But  suppose  they  should,  what  then  ?  Will  the  matter  stop  there  ? 
Only  till  men  pursuing  such  a  recreant  policy  shall  be  left  out,  and 
yield  up  their  places  to  worthier  successors  ;  and  this  will  not  be 
forever.  Their  more  right  minded  fellow-citizens  will  take  care  of 
that.  At  some  rate,  Congress  must,  it  must  see  to  these  things. 
They  make  a  matter  of  social  life  or  death.  The  Courts  of  this 
Union  must  be  open  to  the  people  of  this  Union.  The  poorest  cit- 
izen speaks  with  a  voice  louder  and  more  potential  than  the  bab- 
blings of  many  Congresses,  when  he  says,  Clear  the  way  for  me  in- 
to that  Court-House,  where  the  grave  majesty  of  my  country's 
justice  sits,  to  hear  the  feeble,  and  decree  the  right.  I  have  a  right 
to  enter,  and  enter  I  will,  though  all  the  roysterers  in  the  South,  and 
all  the  fiends  below,  obstruct.  Clear  the  way,  at  whatever  cost,  till 
I  stand  right  in  front  of  the  sovereign  tribunal,  and  have  a  chance 
to  tell  my  story.  Do  not  answer  me,  that  the  door  is  beset  by  a 
South  Carolina  rabblement.  That  is  no  affair  of  mine.  I  care  not, 
though  there  be  twenty  South  Carolinas  to  the  mob.  You  know 
best  whether  to  bid  your  catch-poles  coax  or  shove  them  aside.  At 
all  events,  I  say,  Make  a  lane.  I  know  my  power,  and  will  have 
my  due.  I  am  not  one  man ;  so  hindered  and  wronged,  I  am 
clothed  with  a  power  that  can  crush  to  powder  that  of  air  men. 
High  truths,  attested  by  the  world's  experience,  the  manhood  of 
universal  man,  the  sanctity  of  eternal  justice,  they  are  the  counsel- 
lors that  stand  by  me  in  this  presence,  and  they  are  not  suitors  that 
will  take  denial.  Together,  be  sure  of  it,  we  shall  make  the  world 
rock  on  its  foundations  deepest  down  at  the  core  of  things,  but  we 
will  have  our  hearing. 

III.  There  are  two  other  measures,  also  matters  of  national  leg- 
islation merely,  which  require  to  be  adopted  for  the  weightiest  rea- 
sons of  public  morality  and  public  policy  regarding  ourselves,  as  well 
as  out  of  a  becoming  regard  to  the  opinion  of  mankind  ;  measures 
which  should  be  constantly  and  strenuously  aimed  at  from  the  pres- 
ent hour,  in  the  hope  that  favoring  events,  and  the  growing  sense  oi 
justice  and  humanity  among  our  people,  will  before  long  allow  them 
to  be  carried  through. 

1.  One  is  the  repeal  of  so  much  of  the  law  of  February  27th, 
1801,  as  permits  the  existence  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Colum- 


WHAT    CAN    THE    FREE    STATES    DO  ?  83 

bia,  the  seat  of  the  national  government.  Here  we  cannot  throw 
off  the  responsibility  of  ourselves  harboring  the  accursed  thing. 
The  government  of  the  country,  in  which  we  of  the  Free  States 
have  our  full  part,  is  the  local  legislature  of  the  District.  And  the 
District,  by  the  will  and  pleasure  of  the  United  States,  is  not  only  a 
slave  region.  It  is  a  slave  jail  and  slave  stall.  It  is  little  that  there 
we  flaunt  our  shame  in  the  eyes  of  the  representatives  of  Christian 
nations.  We  ought  to  do  that  penance  for  the  sin  ;  and,  unlike  the 
Coventry  people  when  Godiva  passed,  they  ought  all  to  be  staring 
and  jeering  from  their  windows  at  us.  But  it  is  a  foul  abomination 
that  we,  children  of  freedom's  soldiers  and  martyrs,  should  set  the 
police  that  guards  the  great  slave  auction  of  the  country,  —  the  den 
where,  above  all  other  spots,  that  wretchedness  is  piled  and  crowd- 
ed, which  belongs  to  the  tearing  away  of  men,  women,  and  child- 
ren,—  helpless  infancy,  helpless  age,  conjugal  attachment,  —  from 
partners,  parents,  offspring,  brothers  and  country.  Nor  is  even  that 
the  worst  of  our  pet  District.  The  little  tiger's  whelp  loves  daintier 
fare,  and  must  have  its  occasional  treat  of  a  freeman.  Every  now 
and  then  one  of  our  own  free  brothers  gets  within  reach  of  its  pur- 
veyors, and  having  been  kept  awhile  in  prison  fatting,  —  or,  it  may 
be,  thinning,  —  to  see  whether  any.  body  is  going  to  call  for  him,  is 
sold  to  pay  his  jail  fees.  The  house  that  carries  on  slave-marketing 
on  a  large  scale,  drives  a  snugger  business  in  the  manufacturing 
way.  "  Know  ye  the  land  ?"  It  is  "  the  land  of  the  free,  and  the 
home  of  the  brave ;"  and  the  man-shambles  and  man-traps  that  we 
speak  of,  stand  close  by  the  dwelling  of  the  writer  of  that  melliflu- 
ous and  satisfactory  line. 

2.  The  other  measure  of  this  class  is  the  prohibition,  by  Act  of 
Congress,  of  the  Domestic  Slave  Trade  between  the  different  States 
of  the  Union. 

The  number  of  slaves  annually  sold  from  the  more  northerly 
Slave  States  to  the  South  West  is  believed  to  be  not  less  than  forty 
thousand,  yielding  (as  they  are  assorted  lots)  twenty-five  millions  of 
dollars.  It  is  stated  that,  in  1836,  the  amount  of  sales  from  Vir- 
ginia alone  was  twenty-four  millions.* 

The  sale  of  forty  thousand  men,  women,  and  children,  is  easily 
spoken  of.  It  is  despatched  in  a  period.  But  what  an  untold  and 
indescribable  aggregation  and  complication  of  wretchedness  does  it 
represent !  Each  of  those  forty  thousand  was  a  father  or  mother, 
brother  or  sister,  husband  or  wife,  with  heart-strings  to  be  wrung  by 
separation  from  kindred,  and  all  that  from  infancy  had  been  loved. 
The  Foreign  Slave  Trade  is  infamy  unredeemed.  He  who  sells  or 
buys  a  negro  to  be  carried  from  Guinea  to  Louisiana  is  a  pirate  by 
the  law  of  the  civilised  nations.  When  we  catch  him,  we  hang 
him,  and  his  name,  being  that  of  the  wicked,  rots.  What  is  the 
difference  between  the  man  who  sells  from  a  Guinea  barracoon,  and 

*  The  "Virginia  Times,"  as  quoted  in  "  Niles's  Register." 


84  THE     SLAVE    POWER. 

from  a  Virginia  plantation  ?  What  is  the  difference  between  the 
master  of  the  slave  ship,  and  the  driver  of  the  slave  caravan  ? 
What  is  the  difference  to  the  poor  outcast  sufferer,  whether  he  is 
transported  by  sea  or  land  ?  In  one  respect,  we  own,  there  is  a 
difference  in  favor  of  the  latter.  He  is  spared  the  terrible  tortures 
of  the  middle  passage,  though  even  in  this  particular,  if  the  truth  is 
told,  the  advantage  is  not  so  great  as  might  at  first  sight  appear,  for 
the  hardships  are  extreme  under  the  convoy  of  the  land  pirate,  and 
a  large  per  centage  of  deaths  take  place.  And  in  another  respect, 
the  balance  is  all  the  other  way.  Compared  with  the  savage  Guinea 
native,  the  Virginia  negro  is  a  being  of  sensibility  and  refinement. 
His  domestic  affections  are  more  human.  His  home  (harsh  home 
as  it  has  been)  is  dearer.  How  is  it  that  the  nation  so  proudly  and 
talkatively  virtuous  about  the  Foreign  Slave  Trade,  is  so  easy  and 
content  with  the  Domestic  ? 

It  is  not  for  want  of  Constitutional  power  to  carry  out  the  prin- 
ciple to  the  other  application  which  the  principle  equally  demands. 
"Congress,"  says  the  Federal  Constitution  (Art.  I.  §  8),  "shall 
have  power  to  regulate  commerce  with  foreign  nations,  and  among 
the  several  States ;"  and  it  was  under  the  former  clause  of  this  pro- 
vision that  it  made  the  African  Slave  Trade  to  be  felony.  It  has 
the  same  right  over  the  Domestic.*  It  has  recognized  the  existence 
of  the  right  by  a  practical  use  of  it.  By  the  Act  of  March  2,  1807, 
masters  of  vessels,  under  forty  tons  burden,  are  forbidden  to  trans- 
port coastwise  from  one  port  to  another  in  the  United  States  any 
person  of  color  to  be  sold  or  held  as  a  slave,  under  the  penalty  of 
$800  for  every  such  person  so  transported  ;  and  by  other  cogent 
restraints  the  power  of  control  is  assumed  and  made  operative. 
The  rightful  power  that  could  interdict  their  conveyance  in  the 
smaller  craft,  could  interdict  it  equally  in  vessels  of  any  tonnage. 
Again,  says  the  Constitution  (Ibid.  §  9), "The  migration,  or  impor- 
tation of  such  persons  as  any  of  the  existing  States  shall  think 
proper  to  admit,  shall  not  be  prohibited  by  Congress  prior  to  the 
year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,"  —  the  clear  implica- 
tion being  of  a  power,  after  1808,  to  prohibit  migration,  which  has 
not  yet  been  done,  as  well  as  to  prohibit  importation,  which  has 
been ;  and  a  clear  implication,  further,  of  a  power  to  prohibit 
either  emigration  or  importation  at  any  time,  either  before  or  after 
1808,  into  any  States  not  existing  in  1788. 

Is  it  said  that  great  practical  difficulty  would  attend  the  execution 
of  a  law  prohibiting  the  interior  migration,  because  it  passes  through 
a  slave  region,  interested  in  its  continuance  ?  There  might  be. 
But  the  mere  assertion  of  the  principle  and  rule  by  Act  of  Congress 
would  be  itself  of  vast  importance.  The  migration  too  passes 

t  A  memorial  from  Boston  to  Congress,  in  1819,  urging  the  exercise  of  this  right, 
bore  the  names,  among  others,  of  Daniel  Webster,  George  Blake,  Josiah  Quincy5 
James  T.  Austin,  and  John  Gallison. 


WHAT    CAN    THE    FREE    STATES    DO  ?  85 

through  Maryland,  Western  Virginia,  and  Kentucky,  where  there 
are  many  friends  of  freedom,  who  would  of  course  be  friends  to  the 
execution  of  such  a  law.  It  passes  down  the  Western  rivers,  by 
the  ports  of  the  Free  States  of  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois.  When- 
ever, by  happy  fortune,  a  poor  fellow  so  illegally  dealt  with,  should 
afterwards  escape  to  a  place  where  law  prevailed,  he  could  assert  a 
legal  right  to  his  liberty.  And  singularly  enough,  it  seems  that  we 
might  expect  aid  in  carrying  through  such  a  law  from  the  very  cen- 
tral focus  of  the  Slave  Dominion.  The  same  policy  which  is  lead- 
ing Alabama  by  its  legislation,  and  has  led  Mississippi  by  its  Consti- 
tution, to  prohibit  the  immigration  of  slaves  within  their  own 
borders,  might  be  expected  to  incline  them  to  prohibit  the  emigra- 
tion out  of  the  borders  of  the  other  States. 

The  effects  of  such  a  provision  would  be  of  the  utmost  value.  It 
would  efface  one  of  the  saddest  features  of  the  institution,  by  per- 
mitting the  poor  black  to  live  his  life  out  among  his  friends,  and  on 
his  native  soil.  It  would  lay  the  axe  at  the  root  of  critical  ques- 
tions with  humane  and  enlightened  foreign  powers,  like  the  ques- 
tions of  the  Enterprise  and  Creole.  And  indirectly  it  would  strike 
a  fatal  blow  at  the  continuance  of  slavery  in  the  northern  region  of 
the  slave  country.  Slaves  are  already  of  little  or  no  value  in  Vir- 
ginia, except  as  stock  raised  for  a  foreign  market.  There  would  be 
no  more  use  for  a  million  of  slaves  in  Virginia  than  for  a  million  of 
horses  in  Vermont.  A  fifth  wheel  to  a  coach  would  be  scarcely 
less  serviceable  ;  and,  besides,  the  wheel  would  not  eat.  "  No- 
where in  the  farming  of  the  United  States,"  said  Mr.  Clay,  in  a 
speech  to  the  Kentucky  Colonization  Society,  as  long  ago  as  1829, 
"  could  slave  labor  be  generally  employed,  if  the  proprietors  were 
not  tempted  to  raise  slaves  by  the  high  price  of  the  Southern  mar- 
kets." The  masters  would  be  forward  enough  to  quit  themselves 
of  the  incumbrance  at  home,  when  they  could  no  longer  make  mer- 
chandize of  it  abroad. 

We  care  not  to  pursue  this  subject  further.  Possibly  the  time 
may  come,  when  the  Free  States  will  inquire,  whether,  under  the 
constitutional  recognition  of  slavery  by  the  old  Thirteen  States, 
original  parties  to  the  compact,  or  in  any  other  way,  slavery  ever 
acquired  a  legal  existence  within  the  territory,  afterwards  introduced, 
of  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  Missouri ;  and  whether  the  nation  is 
true  to  its  solemn  guaranty  to  South  Carolina  of  "  a  republican  form 
of  government,"  when  more  than  one  half  of  her  people  is  under 
the  despotic  sway  of  the  rest.  If  interpretations  of  the  compact, 
to  which  such  questions  might  lead,  should  at  first  view  seem  bold, 
it  is  quite  clear  that  they  would  not  be  of  greater  latitude  than 
that  which  admitted  Texas.  But  we  hope  that  before  they  shall  be 
raised,  the  evil  which  they  might  be  designed  to  remove  will  haye 
been  quietly  abandoned  by  the  parties  most  interested  in  its  fate. 

6* 


86  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 


NO.  XXIV. 

WHAT    MUST    THE    FREE    STATES    DO    ABOUT    IT?  — WHAT 
MUST  MASSACHUSETTS  DO? 

THE  partial  reply  to  the  former  of  these  questions,  attempted  in 
the  last  number  of  this  series  of  papers,  was  confined  to  particulars 
in  which  relief  might  be  obtained  by  acts  of  national  legislation 
merely,  without  the  need  of  any  modification  of  the  organic  law. 
There  are  other  particulars,  in  which  it  is  the  Constitution  itself  that 
imposes  the  burdens  we  groan  under.  The  frarners  of  that  instru- 
ment, erroneously  supposing  that  Slavery  was  not  to  grow,  and  that 
it  was  soon  to  die,  for  the  sake  of  union  allowed  certain  immunities 
to  the  institution,  which,  could  they  have  anticipated  its  future  ex- 
pansion and  mischiefs,  they  would  sooner  have  perished  than  per- 
mitted. 

But,  in  their  calm  wisdom,  they  foresaw  that  experience  might 
reveal  defects  in  their  frame  of  government,  and  they  carefully  pro- 
vided a  peaceable  method  for  introducing  such  emendations  as  time 
might  show  to  be  needful.  Nothing  is  more  prominent  in  the  Con- 
stitution than  its  self-correcting  power.  Evils  which  disclose  them- 
selves, and  which  cannot  be  corrected  under  its  exising  provisions, 
it  directs  to  be  redressed  by  alterations  in  it ;  and  the  time  may  not 
be  so  distant  as  to  most  it  now  appears,  when  certain  onerous  liabil- 
ities under  which  we  labor  may  be  thrown  off  by  means  of  the  Con- 
stitutional provision  for  amendments.  At  all  events,  whether  that 
time  is  nearer  or  more  remote,  depends  simply  on  the  will  of  the 
non-slave-holding  voters  of  this  Union,  who  are  to  the  slave-holding 
voters  in  the  proportion  of  thirty  to  one,  and  who,  in  every  individ- 
ual State,  constitute  an  immense  majority.  And  this  fact,  that  the 
ivill  of  the  voters  can  immediately  give  a  practical  decision  even  in 
the  most  difficult  and  unmanageable  case  which  belongs  to  the  whole 
subject,  is  a  justification,  and  a  motive,  and  a  demand,  for  the  most 
energetic  and  persevering  exertions  to  enlighten  and  move  the  pub- 
lic mind. 

The  cases  of  hardship,  from  which,  as  long  as  slavery  exists,  noth- 
ing short  of  amendment  of  the  Constitution  can  give  relief,  are  two. 
The  first  relates  to  the  distribution  of  political  power.  As  the  con- 
stitution has  been  used  and  abused,  fourteen  slave  States,  with  an 
aggregate  free  population  equal  only  to  that  of  the  two  free  States 
of  New  York  and  Ohio,  send  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
28  members,  and  to  the  House  of  Representatives  76,  while  those 
two  States  have  together  but  four  votes  in  the  upper  House,  and 
55  in  the  lower.  And  in  the  Electoral  Colleges  the  same  amount 
of  free  population  which  in  those  fourteen  States  casts  104  votes 


WHAT    MUST    THE    FREE    STATES    DO  ?  87 

for  President  and  Vice  President,  has  in  New  York  and  Ohio  only 
59,^— seven  more  than  half  the  number. 

The  second  case  is  that  of  fugitive  slaves,  who,  if  they  escape  into 
a  free  State,  must,  by  the  Constitution,  "  be  delivered  up  on  claim 
of  the  party  to  whom  their  service  or  labor  may  be  due."     The  ob- 
ligation is,  to  the  last  degree,  revolting  and  offensive.     Recent  ex- 
positions of  the  United  States'  Supreme  Court,  of  which  some  of 
the  States  have  availed  themselves  by  making  it  highly  penal  for  their 
magistrates   to   have   part  or  lot  in  the  matter,  and  decisions  of  the 
State  Courts  affirming  the  freedom  of  the  slave  brought  by  his  mas- 
ter within  their  jurisdiction,  have  greatly  limited  its  applications  as 
they  were  formerly  understood.     And  so  unanimous  are  the  people 
getting  to  be  about  the  iniquity  of  the   transaction,  that  the    provi- 
sion has  nearly  lost  its  sting,  except  as  an  insult  to  their  moral  sense. 
It  is  true  it  is  not  lawful  to  kick  the  slave-hunter  through  and  out 
of  the  free  States,  but  it  is  perfectly  lawful  to  refuse  him  a  bed,  a 
dinner,  or  a  coach,  and  to  hold  one's  tongue  as  to  the   whereabouts 
of  his  intended  victim.     The  stout  Quaker  could  not,  in  conscience, 
knock  down  his  pert  assailant,  but  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
his  holding  him  very  hard. 

Constitutional  amendments,  which  may  be  remote,  and  redress 
by  simple  legislation,  which  may  be  near  at  hand,  are  both  to  be 
aimed  at  by  acting  on  the  public  opinion  of  the  country.  THE 
FREE  PEOPLE  of  these  United  States  are  the  constitutional  consti- 
tution-menders and  law-makers.  If  the  evils  which  have  now  been 
commented  on, — at  much  greater  length  than  was  contemplated 
when  the  task  was  undertaken,  yet  with  much  less  fulness  of  argu- 
ment and  illustration  than  might  have  been  profitable, — if  these  evils 
are  shameful  and  monstrous,  then  it  is  the  part  of  just  and  patriotic 
men,  disregarding  the  passions  and  interests  of  the  hour,  the  clamor 
of  the  wicked,  and  even  the  coldness  and  distrust  of  the  good,  to 
endeavor  to  move  the  people  to  their  overthrow,  with  the  honest 
voice  of  truth  and  reason. 

But  Congressional  legislation  is  to  be  what  Senators  and  Repre- 
sentatives in  Congress  shall  will  it  to  be  ;  and  the  Slave  influence 
in  Congress,  though  ostensibly  in  a  decided  minority  in  one  House, 
has  hitherto  had  a  most  baleful  influence  in  determining  that  will, 
by  a  skilful  use  of  the  patronage  of  the  government,  and  by  playing 
off  against  each  other  the  parties  in  the  Free  States.  The  prospect 
of  a  foreign  embassy,  of  an  Executive  department,  and  other  pros- 
pects higher,  and  others  vet  much  meaner  than  these,  have  too  often 
proved  powerful  to  sway  the  representative  of  freemen  from  the 
upright  but  not  gainful  line  of  fidelity  to  the  honor  arid  interests 
of  his  constituents.  Many  a  northern  delegate  who  has  gone  from 
home,  seemingly  as  stubborn  and  immovable  as  the  mountains  that 
reared  him,  has  not  breathed  the  air  of  Washington  more  than  long 
enough  to  find  that  he  has  talents  for  rising,  and  to  show  to  the 
Hers  in  wait  that  he  is  worth  securing,  before  he  has  begun  to  be 


S3  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

bewildered  by  visions  of  "  my  prospects  as  a  public  man/'  a  phrase 
heard  for  the  first  time  (at  least  in  New  England)  not  many  years 
ago,  and  one  that  has  marvellous  power  to  confound  his  perceptions 
of  official  morality,  and  make  him  useless,  or  worse,  in  respect  to  all 
the  highest  purposes  for  which  he  ought  to  understand  himself  to 
have  been  sent.  So  that  it  has  come  to  seem  not  as  safe  as  could 
be  wished,  to  depute  any  man  from  the  Free  States  to  the  national 
councils,  who  at  the  same  time  has  talent  to  recommend  himself  to 
the  slave-administered  national  government,  and  who,  for  an  indefi- 
nite period  to  come,  would  consent  to  receive  promotion  at  its 
hands. 

,The  Free  States,  if  they  would  make  an  effort  for  rescue  from 
this  thraldom,  must  be  more  careful  than  they  have  been,  to  make 
sure  of  the  character, — the  principles,  the  firmness,  and  the  objects, — 
of  those  whom  they  invest  with  this  momentous  agency  of  the  share 
that  belongs  to  them  in  the  central  administration.  The  slave- 
ridden  South  is  perfectly  true  to  itself  in  this  matter.  Sharply  as 
the  sham-fight  of  parties  may  ring  and  thunder,  in  this  soft  bond 
of  amity  all  parties  embrace.  Whether  the  white  or  the  red  rose 
'triumphs,  the  man  chaired  is  without  fail  a  stout  champion  of  the 
despotism  of  the  Slave  Dominion.  It  is  fully  time  that  the  Free 
should  take  their  lesson  of  unanimity  on  the  fundamental  principle 
of  social  being,  and  take  like  care  of  the  pretended  object  of  their 
liveliest  affection.  But,  alas  ! 

"  While  our  tyrants  joined  in  hate, 
We  never  joined  in  love." 

Tariffs,  Sub-Treasuries,  and  Distributions  of  Public  Lands,  are  very 
important  things.  Parties  at  the  North  have  disagreed  upon  them, 
and  may  continue  to  disagree.  But  the  claims  of  justice  and 
humanity,  and  the  priceless  worth  of  liberty,  are  things  far  more 
important,  and  upon  these  they  profess  to  be  of  one  accord.  If  so, 
it  should  be  as  impossible  for  any  man  to  receive  the  trust  of  rep- 
resenting them  in  the  sovereign  halls  of  their  country's  legislation, 
who  does  not  hate  slavery  with  a  deadly  immitigable  hatred,  as  it 
is,  as  yet,  for  any  man  to  receive  that  trust  at  the  South,  who  does 
not  roll  the  poison  as  a  sweet  morsel  under  his  tongue. 

When  the  Free  States  have  mustered  their  honest  strength,  and 
displayed  their  long  columns,  marshalled  for  the  right,  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  they  will  not  look  long  to  see  the  bug-bear  im- 
pediment in  the  other  House  give  way.  In  that  progress  of  opin- 
ion which  has  auspiciously  begun,  it  would  not  be  half  as  surprising 
as  many  a  political  change  that  has  happened  in  our  day, — the  event 
is  by  no  means  as  improbable  as  the  Annexation  of  Texas  seemed 
four  years  ago, — to  see  the  Congressional  delegations  of  Delaware, 
Maryland,  Virginia,  and  Kentucky,  in  both  Houses  of  Congress, 
elected  by,  and  voting  with,  the  non-slaveholding  Friends  of  Amer- 


WHAT    MUST    MASSACHUSETTS    DO  ?  89 

ican  Freedom.  This  may  well  come  to  pass,  before  those  States 
shall  be  ripe  for  legislation  in  favor  of  emancipation  within  their 
borders.  And  the  favor  and  confidence  of  the  vast  majority  of 
non-slaveholders.  North  and  South,  when  they  have  come  to  show- 
something  of  their  numbers  and  power  in  Congress,  will  nerve  and 
encourage  their  allies  in  the  afflicted  region,  and  strengthen  their 
efforts  to  upheave  the  giant  evil. 

But  the  way  to  bring  this  about,  is  not  for  freemen  to  be  dumb, 
either  in  their  own  circles,  or  in  expostulations  with  their  brethren  at 
the  South.  It  is  absolutely  and  demonstrably  a  common  interest. 
We  are  their  friends,  when  we  entreat  them  to  clear  themselves  and 
us  from  this  four-fold  curse,  though  they  will  not  yet  believe  it ;  and 
by-and-by  they  will  thank  us, — they  and  theirs, — from  the  deepest 
depths  of  their  hearts,  for  any  thing  we  may  have  done  towards 
opening  their  eyes  to  the  hideous  calamity  and  sin. 

Meanwhile,  a  question  for  those  whom  these  papers  reach,  is, 
What  must  Massachusetts  do  ?  She  is  a  little  Commonwealth,  but 
still  a  great  deal  bigger  in  population,  wealth,  and  all  the  better 
things  that  "  constitute  a  State,"  than  South  Carolina,  which  so 
long  has  swayed,  to  such  disastrous  issues,  the  opinion  of  the  South, 
and  through  that,  the  destiny  of  the  nation.  Massachusetts,  small 
as  she  is,  is  marked  by  her  history  and  by  some  other  tokens,  as  the 
natural  leader  in  the  struggle  for  freedom.  She  spoke  the  nation 
into  independence  with  the  trumpet  voices  of  her  Faneuil  Hall,  and 
the  sharper  echoes  of  her  Concord  and  Bunker  Hill.  It  is  her  mis- 
sion to  lead  the  way  in  the  redemption  of  the  relapsed  nation  from 
a  yet  baser  than  its  colonial  yoke.  She  has  filled  New  England 
with  her  great  ancestral  spirit.  The  homes  of  the  nurslings  of  her 
generous  breast  stand  thick  upon  the  sward  of  Ohio  and  Western 
New  York.  The  emigrant  of  the  more  distant  West  recounts,  as 
his  exiled  heart's  dearest  treasures,  the  sacred  lessons  of  her  schools 
and  churches,  and  will  yet  repeat  them  in  tones  to  be  heard  and 
noted  of  all  men.  Call  her  little,  if  you  will,  when  you  are  speak- 
ing words  of  ceremony.  But  call  her  great,  as  she  is,  when  her 
responsibility  is  in  question.  Point  to  the  page,  bearing  the  record 
of  what  is  honorable  in  this  people's  history,  where  her  name  does 
not  stand  in  characters  of  light.  Imagine  the  time  when  awful  ca- 
lamity and  guilt  shall  have  stricken  down  this  nation,  and  when  the 
first  inquiry  of  the  explorer  of  the  course  of  past  events  will  not 
be,  What  was  Massachusetts  doing  in  that  crisis  of  ruin, — the  land 
of  the  Carvers  and  Winthrops,  the  Otises,  the  Warrens,  the 
Adamses,  the  Quincys  ?  After  her  ages  of  glory,  was  she  disgraced 
at  last  by  a  catiff  inaction  while  shame  and  misery  deluged  the 
land,  or  did  she  keep  her  brave  fame  pure  to  the  last  by  falling  in 
the  good  fight,  in  the  last  ditch  of  liberty  ? 

It  is  never  worth  while  to  deem  meanly  of  the  agency  which 
occasion  may  demand  from  any  community  or  any  man.  The 
greatness  of  the  occasion  imparts  a  greatness  to  the  righteous  and 


90  THE    SLAVE    POWER. 

steady  act  of  the  humblest.  And  Providence  has  not  cast  our  lot 
in  a  dark  corner.  We  men  of  Massachusetts  of  this  age  have  a 
function,  the  accomplishment  of  which,  for  better  or  worse,  will 
stand,  long  after  moth  and  rust  shall  have  corrupted  all  the  factories 
and  their  fabrics,  and  the  thief  time  shall  have  pilfered  all  this  gen- 
eration's heaps  of  gold.  In  the  present  momentous  attitude  of 
things,  the  world  has  an  eye  on  the  dwellers  of  that  stormy  coast  which 
welcomed  the  forlorn  but  unconquerable  fugitives  of  freedom  in  the 
seventeenth  century  ;  and  posterity,  after  seventeen  centuries  more, 
will  turn  back  with  a  blazing  torch  to  search  them  and  their 
doings  out. 

If  we  of  Massachusetts  do  not  fill  our  proper  place,  there  is  a 
prospect  that  others  will,  so  imminent  is  the  occasion,  and  so  widely 
is  already  a  free  spirit  kindled.  Perhaps,  for  the  moment,  New 
Hampshire  and  Maine  are  stepping  in  a  little  before  us.  It  has  not 
been  our  practice  to  allow  them  to  be  bearers  of  the  standard, 
but  if  we  do  not  mean  that  they  should  now  be,  it  is  time  to  be 
grasping  it  with  our  own  hand,  and  passing  to  our  place  in  the  van. 
Vermont  and  Connecticut,  and  the  great  North  West,  are  looking 
to  see  how  we  demean  ourselves  at  this  juncture,  and  to  honor  us 
with  a  place  in  their  leading,  or  to  leave  us  out  and  behind,  accord- 
ing as  we  are  recreant  or  true. 

But  true  we  shall  be,  without  fail.  They  stupidly  misjudge  the 
people  of  Massachusetts,  who  think  that  they  can  marshal  her  par- 
ties, and  carry  her  votes,  and  at  the  same  time  bid  her  be  laggard 
and  neutral  while  a  great  work  of  virtue  and  patriotism  is  going 
on.  Her  people  love  thrift.  They  ought  to  love  it.  But  they  who, 
at  home  or  abroad,  think  to  govern  her  through  that  impulse,  have 
not  read  the  primer  of  her  history  ;  they  have  not  learned  the  al- 
phabet of  her  character.  There  is  a  high  prevailing  integrity  among 
her  people.  Nothing  moves  them  like  a  great  moral  principle.  At 
the  last  fall  elections,  forty  thousand  voters,  more  than  a  quarter  of 
the  whole  number,  stayed  at  home.  Why  did  they  so  ?  All  sorts 
of  political  isms  were  rife.  Why  were  they  so  ?  Because  there 
was  wanting  a  sufficiently  strong  moral  bond  of  union  in  the  old 
organizations.  In  great  part  because,  on  the  foremost  moral  and 
political  question  of  the  age,  one  of  the  leading  parties  was  rotten 
to  the  core,  and  the  other  was  not  thought  sufficiently  its  opposite. 
The  rejection,  by  last  winter's  Senate,  of  Mr.  Wilson's  Resolves, 
occasioned  grief  and  offence  to  numbers.  That  error  must  be  some- 
how retrieved,  or  the  mutual  confidence  that  has  subsisted  has  re- 
ceived a  well-nigh  fatal  wound. 

There  is  a  great  deal  to  be  done,  North  and  South,  before  the 
magnificent  idea  of  the  authors  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  shall 
be  realized.  But  they  who  are  looking  up  to  that  accomplish- 
ment are  cheered  by  all  good  omens.  They  have  that  which  in 
antiquity  was  thought  the  best ;  "  the  best  of  all  omens  is,  to  be 


CONCLUSION. 

struggling  for  our  country."  They  have  that  of  the  sympathy  and 
good  wishes  of  all  civilized  and  Christian  men  beyond  the  sea. 
They  have  that  of  the  invincible  vigor  of  truth  and  righteousness. 
They  have  that  of  the  smile  of  the  omnipotent  God  of  justice 
and  love. 

We  have  brought  our  own  humble  task  to  a  close.  In  parts  it 
has  been  a  harsh  and  painful  one,  though  not  without  its  satisfac- 
tions in  expressions  of  the  approbation  of  good  men.  May  He, 
whose  favor  is  light  and  strength,  prosper  the  poor  endeavor !  It 
was  for  a  great  purpose,  and  it  was  well  meant,  however  feebly 
executed. 


, 


